{"id":277797,"date":"2025-07-20T16:32:13","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277797\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T16:32:13","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T16:32:13","slug":"the-european-union-passed-its-big-ai-bill-will-it-enforce-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/277797\/","title":{"rendered":"The European Union Passed Its Big AI Bill. Will It Enforce It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhy is the European Union like Warren G<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\n\tThey both have to regulate<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\n\tThese days, that can be tough going.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn March 2024, the European Parliament passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, the first serious law that would regulate AI. Procedurally, this represented an enormous accomplishment \u2014 it\u2019s not easy to pass legislation at the speed of innovation. Practically, like most legislation, the act represented a compromise, applying different levels of regulatory scrutiny to applications with different levels of risk. Broadly, it fell far short of perfect, but it was much better than the proposed 10-year moratorium on enforcing state laws affecting AI in the American \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill Act<\/a>.\u201d (The act passed. This provision was eliminated. I am still unable to say the name of this law without giggling.)<\/p>\n

\n\tNow all creators and rightsholders have to do is lobby the EU to enforce it \u2014 to \u201cStay True to the [AI] Act<\/a>,\u201d to quote the campaign that the recording business trade association IFPI and other rightsholder groups unveiled on July 15, complete with the inevitable but slightly ungainly #StayTrueToTheAct hashtag. At a time when technology companies already seem more powerful than governments, this is not a good sign.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe asks involved are simple and familiar: Transparency, consent and remuneration. The second two are at the heart of copyright \u2014 creators and rightsholders want to negotiate (consent) so they can get paid fairly (remuneration). But both of those could be difficult, if not impossible, without transparency. And now we get to the heart of the matter.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn Brussels, it sometimes seems like the U.S. technology business is the Wild West and the European Union is trying to bring a modicum of order to a lawless frontier. There\u2019s more than a little truth to this. \u201cRegulators, mount up!\u201d to quote the sample of dialog<\/a> from the 1988 Western Young Guns in the Warren G song \u2014 the startups are out of control again. Indeed, U.S. technology companies like to \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d \u2014 to beg forgiveness rather than ask for permission. In the case of AI, it is assumed that technology companies have already ingested massive amounts of work in order to make their algorithms function. In some cases, this is pretty obvious<\/a>, although it has never been confirmed.<\/p>\n

\n\tBefore the AI Act passed, European copyright law in some cases allowed for data-mining \u2014 ingesting copyrighted works for very limited purposes, unless rightsholders opted out. It\u2019s not entirely clear which AI uses this covers, though, and most professional creators have a label, publisher or collecting society opt-out on their behalf. Based on what we know about generative AI music products, though, it appears that at least some technology companies ingested works controlled by rightsholders that had opted out. (It is unclear when and where the relevant copying was done.) In other words, technology companies have just gone ahead and done what they wanted, nevermind the law \u2014 business as usual in the U.S. but far less common in Europe. The guiding assumption is that this will eventually be solved by litigation or private deals that will make generative AI music a legitimate business.<\/p>\n

\n\tMaybe.<\/p>\n

\n\tBecause using a lawsuit or legal settlement to legitimize the generative AI music business requires compensating rightsholders whose work was copied to train algorithms \u2014 which in turn requires knowing what was copied and how it was used. Once the generative AI business grows, hopefully, technology companies will be able to determine which works were used the most to create a certain output and credit and compensate creators accordingly. That\u2019s why the AI Act required technology companies to track this \u2014 with provisions for transparency. Whatever future one imagines for AI, from making new #sleepwave music to going full fascist<\/a>, it has to involve enough transparency to know which humans to credit \u2014 and, in some cases, blame.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe trouble is that the transparency requirements in the AI Act aren\u2019t very specific. The idea was that companies would follow the spirit of the law, as well as its letter. There are fears this isn\u2019t happening, though, partly because the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, favors a more lax approach to AI. Perhaps, like other governments, it has concerns about \u201cfalling behind\u201d in a technological field that presents serious national security issues. Perhaps there is U.S. pressure to lay off Silicon Valley. Perhaps both.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis isn\u2019t the way to move forward, though. AI technology has the potential to change all sorts of industries, but ingesting albums by Dr. John<\/a> and Dr. Dre<\/a> isn\u2019t going to improve medical technology. (And please don\u2019t let medical AI listen to anything by Dr. Octagon<\/a>!) The EU shouldn\u2019t let the U.S. push it around, especially at a time when technology companies have so much influence in Washington, D.C. More important, the promise of AI is that we can build a digital media business that\u2019s more fair to creators by crediting and compensating them \u2014 and loosening the record-keeping requirements would make this much harder.<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, the idea of lobbying the European Union to enforce its own law is a bit odd. But it\u2019s also alarming. Although it\u2019s hard to know how many people understand much about the AI Act, it was passed democratically by democratically elected lawmakers. We shouldn\u2019t let it be undermined by technology companies \u2014 at least until AI takes over everything, anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Why is the European Union like Warren G? They both have to regulate! These days, that can be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":277798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[323,1942,2000,299,5187,1699,104770],"class_list":{"0":"post-277797","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-follow-the-money"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114886524471706350","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/277798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}