Rapidly evolving artificial intelligence creates new opportunities for the creative industries. It enables you to deliver, develop and commercialise creative content in a new way. However, artificial intelligence needs fair rules that take into account the rights of creative workers and businesses in the industry.
At Teosto, we are working with the rest of the creative sector to promote regulation that takes into account the competitiveness of the creative economy as well as supports transparency and agreeing on the use of material. We encourage the development of responsible artificial intelligence that supports and enhances the creative process while protecting the position of human creativity and art in the world.
Teosto is involved in the development of AI in many ways
The European Union’s AI Act is the first legislative act to broadly regulate AI
The EU AI Act was unanimously approved by the Member States at the Coreper meeting in early February 2024. The Act’s official entry into force is on summer 2024. The new Act aims to ensure that AI systems in the EU are secure and respect fundamental rights. The Act is based on a risk assessment: prohibiting the most harmful use and imposing stricter requirements on AI systems considered to be high-risk. Different levels of transparency are required for general-purpose and low-risk AI systems.
For the creative industries, important provisions in the AI Act include:
- Respect for copyright: artificial intelligence models must comply with EU legislation, including copyright regulations. The use of copyrighted material must be agreed on with the rightholders, and rightholders also have the right to prohibit the use of their material
- Transparency: For general-purpose AI systems and foundation models – i.e. machine learning models trained with a wide range of material – on which general-purpose systems are based, technical documentation and a summary of the material used to train the models must be produced.
The Act is directly applicable legislation in the Member States, but it also requires changes to the current Finnish legislation. The AI Act will start to apply two years after its entry into force. Regulations for higher-risk AI systems will be applicable already sooner.
Teosto’s instructions for registering music produced with the help of artificial intelligence
copyright fundamentally protects and rewards only human creativity. Therefore, a composition or lyrics generated solely by AI cannot be registered as a protected new work. However, if AI has been used as a technical tool in the creative process, the resulting work can be registered as the author’s own work to Teosto as usual. In addition, if only some part of the work is generated by AI, the other part can be registered.
Teosto has signed the Human Artistry Campaign petition and its Core Principles for Artifcial Intelligence Applications, underlining the importance of respecting the work of authors, transparency and compliance with applicable legislation.
Core principles for AI applicationsMusic cannot be used in AI applications without permission
Teosto represents over 40.000 music authors and music publishers and licenses their works based on Teosto’s membership agreement. The main rule under copyright law is that use of copyrighted works requires the relevant rightsholders’ permission (for example a licence). Use of said works for the purposes of developing and training AI technologies requires a license from Teosto, unless otherwise stipulated by applicable law. In relation to the above, Teosto hereby expressly reserves the right to engage in text and data mining in accordance with section 13b.1 of the Finnish Copyright Act (8.7.1961/404).
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