Brussels, April 20 (BNA): Germany’s 42 federations and trade unions representing more than 140,000 authors and artists urged the European Union on Wednesday to strengthen draft AI rules as they cited the threat to their copyrights from ChatGPT.
Creative sector trade unions Verdi and DGB and associations of photographers, designers, journalists and illustrators have outlined their concerns in a letter to the European Commission, Council and EU lawmakers.
The letter emphasized growing concerns about generative AI such as ChatGPT that can simulate humans and generate text and images based on prompts.
“The unauthorized use of protected training materials, their opaque handling, and the predictable substitution of sources with the output of generative AI raise fundamental questions about accountability, liability, and remuneration, which must be addressed before irreversible harm can occur,” a letter seen by Reuters said.
“Generative AI must be at the heart of any meaningful regulation of the AI market,” she said.
The European Commission, which last year proposed AI rules, will in the coming months discuss final details with EU lawmakers and member states before the rules become legislation.
The groups said rules should be strengthened to regulate generative AI across the entire product lifecycle, particularly on providers of foundational models.
They also demand that providers of this technology be held responsible for all content generated and published by artificial intelligence, in particular for infringement of personal and copyright rights, misinformation, or discrimination.
The letter said that enterprise model providers such as Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Meta Platforms should not be allowed to operate centralized platform services for digital content distribution.
HF