PROCIREP, the society of film and television producers, supports the collective opinion piece calling on Members of Parliament to place the bill in favor of the presumption of use of cultural content on the agenda of the National Assembly.
Because this cross-party bill, validated by the Council of State and just unanimously adopted by the Senate, will create a legal presumption that works protected by copyright are used by generative artificial intelligence (GAI) systems and models, thereby putting an end to the opacity of the “trawling” practices of these actors, regardless of their nationality, by enabling rights holders to have the necessary leverage to negotiate, fairly and in a balanced way, when needed through voluntary collective management, the conditions under which their works are used by these actors; because it is urgent to defend cultural and press stakeholders, join the more than 20,000 signatories who already support this opinion piece!
Text of the opinion piece (translated from French):
Ladies and Gentlemen Members of Parliament, our future in the face of generative AI is in your hands!
Writers, artists, journalists, screenwriters, graphic designers, directors, composers, translators, photographers, book publishers, press publishers, producers, distributors… we devote weeks, months, years to creating: writing a text, composing a melody, recording an album, making a film, drawing a work, capturing an emotion, conducting an investigation, bringing all these protected works, our work, to a wide audience.
And then, somewhere in the invisible flow of data, they are absorbed and digested by AI systems that learn thanks to them, learn from them and from us, without our consent, without any compensation or remuneration.
Kept at a distance, faced with opacity compounded by clear bad faith, we are unable to provide proof of this. Among billions of data points, how can one demonstrate that a specific work is being used when access to training data is locked and all transparency is refused?
Nevertheless, our conviction is reinforced by the admissions of tech giants and by the first financial settlements in the United States intended to resolve lawsuits for violations of literary and artistic intellectual property rights.
The presumption that our works are used by AI is not a whim of legal experts. Nor is it an abstract or technical construct. It is a concrete response to an injustice.
When proof has become impossible, it is legitimate to ease the burden with a simple principle: if there are serious indications, it is up to AI system providers to demonstrate that a work has not been used. No more, no less.
The Senate understood this. It unanimously passed a bill establishing this presumption of use. Right, left, center: beyond divisions, a shared conclusion emerged. Human creation deserves to be protected in the face of AI that cannot develop without rules or transparency.
Everything is now at stake in the National Assembly. And intense lobbying by global AI platforms is underway there. They are mistaken: respect for intellectual property is not an obstacle to innovation; on the contrary, it is the condition for its legal certainty and legitimacy.
Yes, we are concerned. The adoption of this text hangs by a thread. If it is not quickly placed on the agenda, its adoption will be delayed, or even become impossible. If it is amended, even once, the final vote will be impossible.
Because parliamentary procedure offers many ways to derail a bill, we solemnly call on the National Assembly to act without delay.
Ladies and Gentlemen Members of Parliament, you will decide whether this law lives or dies. You will decide whether you defend human creation against its synthetic instrumentalization. You will decide whether France, which invented copyright, remains faithful to its history. You will decide whether it chooses to be the first nation to establish fair rules in the age of AI.
Ladies and Gentlemen Members of Parliament, your decision will be watched. Across France and in the heart of your constituencies, those who create, write, inform, perform, compose, film, edit, produce, and publish are placing their trust in you. Time is running out.
