The EP report on copyright and GenAI sends an important signal for the future of journalism in the AI era

The European Publishers Council welcomes the European Parliament’s adoption of the report on Copyright and generative artificial intelligence – opportunities and challenges, by MEP Axel Voss. At a moment of profound technological disruption, the report provides a timely political signal that Europe intends to uphold the fundamental principles of copyright in the age of generative AI.

The central message is clear. Generative AI must not operate in a legal vacuum. As the rapporteur underlined, innovation and copyright “both can, and must coexist”, and creators deserve transparency, legal certainty and fair compensation when their works are used to train AI systems. 

From the perspective of news publishers, the report is particularly significant in three respects.

1. It recognises the urgent need for transparency across the AI value chain: For too long, publishers have faced a black box environment in which protected content is scraped, ingested and monetised without meaningful visibility. The report’s emphasis on transparency and on a rebuttable presumption of use reflects the practical reality that rightsholders currently lack the tools to detect and enforce misuse of their content. 

2. It reinforces the importance of a functioning licensing market: It explicitly points to the need for targeted measures to ensure fair remuneration and restore bargaining power for rightsholders in the generative AI economy. This is essential. Sustainable, good-faith licensing, supported by reliable data flows, is the only scalable path that both rewards investment in quality journalism and supports responsible AI innovation.

3. The report correctly identifies the growing competitive strain and market impacts of generative AI: The report responds to mounting concern about the large-scale use of protected works without consent, control or remuneration, and the resulting imbalance across the digital ecosystem. For press publishers, whose business models depend on audience reach, attribution and sustainable revenues, these market effects are not theoretical, they are already material.

The European Publishers Council views adoption of this report as an important step in shaping the policy direction ahead of the forthcoming review of the EU copyright framework. While further work will be needed to shape some details, the political momentum is now unmistakable.