AI lab | Podcast Season: 1 - Episode: 4 / Release date: 17-10-2023 - Recording date: 25-7-2023

1:1 with Brigitte Vézina
Creative Commons

Episode Highlights

00:00 Intro

00:58 The TL;DR Perspective

09:45 The Deepdive: AI decrypted
Q1 | Creative Commons pointed out the link between AI and free and open source software (FOSS), highlighting opportunities and threats. Can you explain this?

15:50 Q2 | Contrary to the original proposal, copyright rules related to transparency and possibly content moderation have been proposed in the AI Act. Is this necessary?

21:58 Q3 | Creative Commons states that using copyright to govern AI is unwise, as it contradicts copyright’s primordial function of allowing human creativity to flourish. What do you mean by that?

29:07 Outro

Key Quotes

"[Article] 28b 4 (c) (...) is ambiguous (...). We need to find a way to achieve the EU AI Act's aim to really increase transparency, but without placing an undue and unreasonable burden on AI developers."

1 / 10

"Balance is key: there needs to be appropriate limits on copyright protection, if we want the copyright system to fulfil its function of both incentivising creativity and providing access to knowledge. That is the current framework in the EU with the DSM Directive."

2 / 10

"What we've heard time and again through our consultations: copyright is really just one lens through which we can consider AI, and often copyright is not the right tool to regulate [AI]."

3 / 10

"Copyright is a rather blunt tool that often leads to either black and white or all or nothing solutions.That is dangerous."

4 / 10

"Creativity builds on the past. (...) It's important that laws, like copyright, continue to leave room for people to study, to analyse and to learn from previous works to create new ones, and that includes (...) using automated means."

5 / 10

"[Content moderation:] safeguards really should include human oversight, because filters are notoriously bad at identifying perfectly legal uses, like parody or pastiche, or even use of Creative Commons licensed content."

6 / 10

"The courts will need to balance the interests of rightholders with those of users, because we need to protect legitimate uses, so private uses, ‘transformative’ uses, and ensure that they are legally allowed under exceptions."

7 / 10

"The [EU AI Act] (...) could impede making open source components available in public repositories, or collaborating on them: (...) the very process on which open source develops (...)."

8 / 10

"It's critical that well intentioned proposals in the EU AI Act (...) do not have unintended harmful consequences for open-source software development (...) if we want to sustain a dynamic and competitive market."

9 / 10

"We're an organisation that offers licences that are built on top of copyright, but we also know that copyright is not necessarily the answer to every question."

10 / 10

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About Our Guest

Brigitte Vézina | Director of Policy & Open Culture - Creative Commons

Brigitte Vézina is Director of Policy and Open Culture at Creative Commons (CC). She is passionate about all things spanning culture, arts, handicraft, traditions, fashion and, of course, copyright law and policy. Brigitte gets a kick out of tackling the fuzzy legal and policy issues that stand in the way of access, use, re-use and remix of culture, information and knowledge. Before joining CC, she worked for a decade as a legal officer at WIPO and then ran her own consultancy, advising Europeana, SPARC Europe and others on copyright matters. Brigitte is a fellow at the Canadian think tank Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Relevant Resources

Supporting Open Source and Open Science in the EU AI Act | Creative Commons

European Parliament Gives Green Light to AI Act, Moving EU Towards Finalizing the World’s Leading Regulation of AI | Creative Commons

Exploring Preference Signals for AI Training | Creative Commons

Update and Next Steps on CC’s AI Community Consultation | Creative Commons

Better Sharing for Generative AI | Creative Commons

AI Blog Posts | Creative Commons

Open Culture Voices | Creative Commons

Spawning AI

Brigitte Vézina

1:1 with Brigitte VézinaCreative Commons