European Commission risks undermining some of its most valuable, already-thriving industries. These include publishing, film, music, journalism, translation, and the broader copyright-based economy.

Why the EU Should Prioritize Protecting Profitable Cultural Industries Over Risky AI Bets

by ChatGPT-4o

The recent joint statement by over 40 federations of Europe's cultural and creative sectors lays bare a fundamental contradiction in the EU’s approach to digital innovation: in its eagerness to foster artificial intelligence, the Commission risks undermining some of its most valuable, already-thriving industries. These include publishing, film, music, journalism, translation, and the broader copyright-based economy. The GPAI Code of Practice, Guidelines, and Template—meant to implement Article 53 of the EU AI Act—are criticized as failing to meaningfully protect intellectual property rights. I strongly agree with the concerns raised by these federations and argue that the EU must rebalance its priorities. Protecting industries that are already generating jobs, GDP, and cultural value should come before enabling speculative AI investments that may harm the environment, legal norms, and the creative economy.

Protecting Proven Economic Engines

Europe's cultural and creative industries contribute nearly 7% of EU GDP and employ around 17 million professionals. Their economic footprint surpasses that of the automobile, pharmaceutical, and high-tech sectors. These are not legacy industries clinging to the past—they are dynamic, increasingly digitized sectors that power Europe's global soft power, educational systems, and media plurality.

By contrast, most generative AI ventures in Europe are not yet profitable, highly capital-intensive, and dependent on regulatory arbitrage. The EU AI Act was meant to provide guardrails and incentives for "trustworthy" AI—not a blank check for AI labs to scrape copyrighted content, dodge transparency requirements, and commodify European knowledge and culture without permission or payment.

Intellectual Property as a Foundation of Innovation

European law has long held intellectual property (IP) as a cornerstone of its economic and legal framework. Article 53 of the AI Act was crafted to facilitate the enforcement of IP rights against unlicensed uses by GenAI models. Yet, as the joint statement highlights, the final implementation ignores feedback from rightsholdersand instead caters to the needs of AI developers. This is not balance; it's deregulation by dilution.

Failure to enforce meaningful transparency and disclosure of training datasets undermines not only IP enforcement but market fairness. Creators and publishers are now forced to compete with machines trained on their own unlicensed works—often producing derivative content that erodes originality and trust.

Environmental Risks and Resource Misallocation

Another overlooked dimension is the climate impact of AI. Training large foundation models consumes massive amounts of electricity and water. Estimates suggest GPT-class models consume millions of liters of water and megawatts of energy during training and inference. Supporting such technologies without climate safeguards contradicts the EU’s Green Deal ambitions.

Meanwhile, cultural industries have lower environmental footprints and are intrinsically decentralized and sustainable. Supporting AI at the expense of such sectors is not just a legal failure—it’s a strategic and ecological miscalculation.

Additional Arguments for Rebalancing EU Priorities

1. Cultural Sovereignty: Undermining European content creators risks ceding cultural narratives to U.S.-based or Chinese AI labs. Europe would become a passive data source rather than an active storyteller.

2. Jobs and Economic Multipliers: Creative industries create jobs across the value chain—from education and performance to retail and tourism. GenAI, by contrast, concentrates power and profit in a few tech firms while automating large swaths of creative labor.

3. Legal Consistency and Trust: Weak enforcement of the AI Act erodes public trust in both regulation and innovation. It signals that rules can be bent if the lobby is strong enough, undermining the EU’s digital credibility.

4. Innovation Does Not Require Exploitation: Europe can still foster AI innovation by requiring licensing, rewarding ethical AI design, and encouraging domain-specific models trained on consensually acquired data. Exploitative models are not the only way forward.

Conclusion

The EU has a responsibility not only to promote innovation but to protect the foundations of its economy, identity, and legal order. The current AI Act implementation favors experimental technologies over proven, vibrant industries. Unless revised, it risks damaging Europe's cultural ecosystem, weakening copyright enforcement, and misallocating public trust and resources. AI may be the future, but that future must not come at the expense of the present.

The EU should revisit its implementation of Article 53 and enforce meaningful transparency, licensing, and protection for rightsholders—before it's too late.