Magda Cocco and Iakovina Kindylidi are quoted by Jornal Económico in an article entitled " When machines competes unfairly with humans", which addresses the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in art and content production after an open letter was published this week calling for a ban on the unauthorized use of artistic content for the development of AI.

"The unlicensed use of creative works to train generative AI is a significant and unfair threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works and should not be allowed," states this letter, which already has around 11,500 signatures. Magda Cocco and Iakovina Kindylidi explain that the European Union's Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act) helps mitigate the risk of misappropriation and that "although the AI Regulation does not focus on copyright protection", AI model providers must publish a "summary of the sources of the content used to train the models".

In addition, the VdA lawyers clarify that the CDSM (Copyright in the Digital Single Market) Directive, which aims to protect works and rights holders in the digital world, allows authors to "expressly state that they do not want their works to be the subject of data mining. This requires a level of transparency so that artists know when their works are being used for AI training."

• This article was published in the print version of Jornal Económico on 25 October 2024. Access this edition here.