European Union: European Parliament adopted recommendations to protect copyrighted creative work in the age of artificial intelligence

On 10 March 2026, the European Parliament adopted a series of recommendations aimed at protecting copyrighted creative work from use by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The recommendations, passed by 460 votes to 71, state that European Union copyright law should apply to all generative AI systems on the market, regardless of where they were trained. The recommendations aim to ensure transparency and fair remuneration for rights holders whose protected content is used in AI training processes. Under these recommendations, AI providers and deployers must maintain an itemised list of all copyrighted works used for training and records of crawling activities. Failure to provide such documentation could be classified as copyright infringement, with providers bearing all legal costs if a court rules in favour of the rights holder. The Parliament also calls for the creation of a new licensing market, including voluntary collective licensing agreements for individual creators and small and medium-sized enterprises. Furthermore, the recommendations propose that the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) manage an opt-out list allowing rights holders to exclude their work from AI training datasets. The policy specifies that content fully generated by AI should not be protected by copyright. Additionally, the news media sector should receive compensation for traffic or revenue diverted by AI systems and retain the right to refuse the use of their content for training. Parliament also highlights the importance of maintaining media pluralism in AI news aggregation. Finally, Parliament prioritises the protection of the public from manipulated or AI-generated content.