ERNEST URTASUN URGES THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION TO REVISE THE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CODE OF GOOD PRACTICE TO PROTECT CREATORS
01-05-2025
• The document being developed by the European Commission, which is to support the roll-out of the AI law passed in August, has been rejected by much of the cultural sector as not protecting copyright. • The Minister of Culture has sent a letter to the Vice-President of the European Commission, Henna Virkkunen, and to the Commissioner for Culture, Glenn Micallef, in which he states that this Code must provide authors and artists with a tool to exercise and guarantee their intellectual property rights. • In the letter, Urtasun urges the European Commission to review the code "to ensure its alignment with European copyright law, taking into account the European cultural and creative sector and its demands, and in the general interest of our Union".
The Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has asked the European Commission to review the draft Code of Best Practices for General Purpose AI to protect the copyright of , which the Commission has been working on in recent months. He has done so in a letter sent to the Commission's Executive Vice-President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen, and to the Commissioner for Intergenerational Equity, Youth, Culture and Sport, Glenn Micallef. In , Urtasun argues that the document is not in line with European intellectual property law or with the principles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union itself, which includes the right to intellectual property in Article 17.
Consequently, the Minister of Culture calls for a revision of the draftCode, given that "on the basis of this third draft, the obligations of AI system providers are reduced to mere reasonable efforts'. In this sense, compliance with the requirements would become voluntary, undermining respect for intellectual property law.
The European Union passed a ground-breaking international law on Artificial Intelligence on 1 August. This General Purpose AI Code of Good Practice is currently being developed. This is the third draft to be presented and has generated widespread rejection in the cultural sector, especially due to the lack of guarantees in the demand for transparency from AI providers regarding the sources of training and development of AI systems.
A coalition of artists, authors and rights holders in the cultural sector from across the European Union issued a joint statement last March expressing
their concerns about this code for undermining the objectives of the Artificial Intelligence Act, producing legal uncertainty and diluting the obligations of AI providers to comply with EU law. The Minister of Culture shares these same concerns with the sector, as stated in his letter to the Commission: "We can only join the many voices from the economic, cultural and creative sectors that are calling for an urgent review of the Code".
The Minister of Culture has been meeting in recent weeks with representatives of the Spanish cultural sector to address the challenges posed by generative AI and jointly assess possible measures to protect creators. Artificial Intelligence will also be one of the central themes at Mondiacult 2025, the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development, and already being addressed in work leading up to the conference, which will be held in Barcelona next September.
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