Croatian cultural organizations also concerned about the EU’s AI Act

According to the European Commission the AI Act is the first-ever comprehensive legal framework on AI in the world. The Commission claims that the aim of the rules is to foster trustworthy AI in Europe. However, not all EU citizens agree with this claim.

Following the introduction of the new EU Artificial Intelligence Act, the first of its kind in the world, forty European cultural organizations, including several from Croatia, have signed a statement of disagreement, in which they say the Act does not sufficiently protect artist copyrights. Ela Varošanec Krsnik from the Croatian Society of Literary Translators: "A huge amount of data is needed to train artificial intelligence, and copyrighted material is the most suitable for this because this data is useful to ensure the best possible communication between artificial intelligence models and users."

The Director of the Croatian Recording Association Mladen Milić sees plagiarism as a potential problem: "The biggest problem or danger for young authors or musicians, especially those at the beginning of their careers, is precisely that artificial intelligence models create works that are the same or similar to theirs, which are yet to find their audience."

According to lawyer and the Director of the Croatian Music Institute, Romana Matanovac Vučković, there is little artists and creators can do to protect themselves: "Currently the only legal option is for them to reserve rights in machine-readable form in a way that effectively prohibits artificial intelligence from being trained on their content. However, how successfully they will implement this in practice if someone does not respect this prohibition remains a big question mark."

Artists and creators in the European Union are not alone in their protest. In February, musicians such as Kate Bush and Annie Lennox rebelled against the new British national plan for AI. Musicians from within the EU did so a month ago with the "Stay True to the Law" campaign, a campaign the Croatian Record Association is also participating in.

Source: HRT