TRIBUNE – After a unanimous vote in the Senate, press and cultural organizations are urging deputies to include on the agenda the proposed law on the presumption of use of content by artificial intelligence suppliers.
The General Information Press Alliance, joined by 20,000 professionals from the cultural sector (journalists, photographers, artists and directors), calls on deputies to urgently take up the proposed law known as “Darcos”. This text provides for the establishment of a presumption of use of journalistic and cultural content when training artificial intelligence models. This provision aims to facilitate the application of copyright by reversing the burden of proof in favor of the creators. Supported by all French daily newspapers and numerous professional organizations, this text is presented as a necessary regulatory measure to guarantee remuneration for content used by technology companies.
Ladies and Gentlemen, 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, etc.: 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 of these protected works, our work, to life for a wide audience.
And then, somewhere in the invisible flow of data, it is sucked up and digested by AI systems that learn from it, learn from it and from us, without our consent, without any compensation or remuneration.
Kept aside, faced with opacity coupled with a certain ill will, we are unable to provide proof. With billions of data points, how can we demonstrate that a specific work is used when access to the training data is locked and all transparency is refused?
However, our conviction is reinforced by the confessions of the tech giants and by the first financial transactions in the United States intended to settle lawsuits in violation of literary and artistic property rights.
The presumption of use of our works by AI is not a legal fad. Nor is it an abstract or technical construction. It is a concrete response to an injustice.
When proof has become impossible, it is legitimate to lighten the burden with a simple principle: if there are serious indications, it is up to the suppliers of AI systems to demonstrate that a work has not been used. No more, no less.
The Senate understands this. He unanimously voted for a bill establishing this presumption of use. Right, left, center: beyond the divisions, an observation has emerged. Human creation deserves to be protected in the face of an AI that cannot develop without rules or transparency.
Everything is at stake today in the National Assembly. And the intense lobbying of global AI platforms is taking place there. They are wrong: respect for intellectual property is not a brake on innovation, on the contrary it is the condition for its legal security and legitimacy.
Yes, we are worried. The adoption of this text hangs by a thread. If it is not placed on the agenda quickly, its adoption will be delayed, if not impossible. If it is amended even once, the final vote will be impossible.
Because parliamentary procedure offers many ways to derail a text, we solemnly call on the National Assembly to act without delay.
Ladies and Gentlemen, you will decide whether this law lives or dies. You will decide whether you defend human creation in the face of 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 set fair rules in the age of AI.
Ladies and gentlemen, your decision will be observed. Throughout France and at the heart of your constituencies, those who create, write, inform, perform, compose, film, edit, produce and publish trust you. Time is running out.
