October 2024

At the meeting of the ALAI Executive Committee that preceded the ALAI Congress in Santiago, Chile in October 2024 our Chairman, Stephen Edwards, gave a brief presentation about BLACA, covering the information set out in the powerpoint slides to be found here.

February 2024

On 17 February 2024, ALAI adopted a resolution on the impact of AI on Copyright law.

The Executive Committee of the Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale (ALAI), atits meeting in Paris on 17 February 2024, adopted the following resolution, which follows on from the results of the ALAI Paris Congress, held from 22 to 23 June 2023:

Considers that artificial intelligence (AI) raises existential social and economic challenges that affect, in particular, the individual creator, whether author or artist.

Considers that the principle of respect for the exclusive rights of authors and performers applies in the context of AI, and that it follows that the rightholder’s authorisation must be obtained and at least fair and equitable remuneration guaranteed from the moment their creations or performances are used, whether or not for profit-making purposes, to feed all or part of the system's "training data". Any legislative, case law or contractual solution put in place to authorise this input must comply with this fundamental standard. In particular, any limitation or exception to the rightholder’s exclusive rights must at least comply with the threestep test.

Affirms that the humanist principle that inspires the provisions of the Berne Convention requires us to consider that, in the absence of creative and determinative intervention by a human being, no production resulting from an automatic data processing system can claim to be vested with rights based on this Convention. While a system whose output is controlled by a natural person may provide a tool for human creation, outputs resulting from purely mechanical processing are not "intellectual creations" within the meaning of article 2 of this Convention.

Affirms that the use of an AI system must be accompanied by a duty of transparency, upstream and downstream, of the production process. Upstream, for the information of rightholders, when pre-existing protected works or performances are entered into the AI system for training
purposes. Downstream, after production, so that potential buyers or users of the generated object are informed of its production process.