March 28 2025
ICMP – the global voice of the music publishing industry, representing Majors, Indies and 77 national trade associations across 6 continents – has issued a joint statement on the EU AI Act with a coalition of international creative industries, artists, performers and criticising the political direction of travel on the EU’s AI Act implementation. Enforcement tools such as a new AI Training Disclosure Summary and a Code of Practice are being finalised and will be applicable to AI and tech companies around the world. However the draft AI Code of Practice is now an issue of serious concern what with the unacceptable political pressure being brought to bear on the EU by tech companies to try and water it down.
See the coalition’s full statement here. “The third draft of the GPAI Code of Practice undermines the objectives of the AI Act, contravenes EU law and ignores the intention of the EU legislator – we cannot support it.”
ICMP Director General John Phelan commented:
“The international music industry has been experiencing the largest IP infringement in history, what with unscrupulous Generative AI and Big Tech companies scraping, training and profiting from the world’s music, almost always without a license. The EU AI Act was one of the first AI specific laws in the world. It was incredibly hard won. But laws are only as good as their enforcement. The primary point of the AI Act is for the new EU AI Office to design meaningful enforcement tools for our industry to protect songwriters and composers’ work against such infringement. ICMP is participating in those processes and has brought extensive evidence of copyright infringement by companies such as Suno, Udio and many Big Tech companies. As things stand, our industry cannot support the EU’s draft Code of Practice for AI companies. It needs rigorous reworking in the short time remaining for the new AI Office to have our industry’s support. The clock is ticking.”
