Generative AI systems threaten to usurp the market for human press and media productions. To enable journalists to act as ‘watchdogs’, highlight societal problems, and prompt necessary changes, remuneration rules should offer support for quality journalistic work by humans. In the EU, the rights reservation option following from Article 4(3) of the 2019 Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market – now flanked by the provisions of the AI Act – could support a remuneration system focusing on the use of human journalistic content for AI training. While AI training income would benefit media companies that own large repertoires of journalistic work, individual journalists might not receive an appropriate revenue share. This chapter suggests introducing a general output-based payment obligation on all providers and users of generative AI systems involved in media productions: both companies offering generative AI systems and companies using these systems in the media sector. Mandatory collective rights management could ensure payment directly to individual journalists, as in the repartitioning schemes of collecting societies. The remuneration could also finance funds that improve journalists’ working and living conditions. When distributing AI remuneration, social and cultural institutions could prioritise public interest journalism as a countermeasure to AI-generated misinformation and disinformation.

Artificial intelligence is an emerging topic in intellectual property protection. The chapter starts by useful definitions of big data and AI and explores some of the work done on AI and big data in the WTO and in particular under the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The chapter then asks what needs to be done to adapt IP law to meet the challenge of big data and AI, by looking at distinct provisions of TRIPS.

The European Commission’s latest round of discussions on copyright reforms dates back to 2013.1 The first copyright reform package was discussed in 2014, but was never released to the public.2 After reviewing their views, in 2015 the Commission revealed their Digital Single Market Strategy (DSM).3 The DSM outlined a number of policy measures aiming at the creation of a digital single market in the EU, and included copyright law reform as part of this package.4 In 2016, the Commission released a package of documents suggesting reforms to the EU copyright framework, including inter alia the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market5 (hereinafter “the Proposed Directive”), and a Regulation on Online Transmissions and Retransmissions of TV and Radio Programs,6 accompanied by the Impact Assessment on the modernization of EU copyright rules.7 The Commission’s proposals, and especially the Proposed Directive, have since caused intense debates by stakeholders, commentators, and the EU law-making bodies.8