The copyright trap

The current debate on EU copyright law and AI training must move beyond the creative sector to include the wider European economy. While the rights of creators are legitimate and must be protected, the rules governing data use for AI models have far-reaching economic consequences. At its core, this is a debate about Europe's economic competitiveness and its ability to reverse the technological stagnation identified in the Draghi report. The EU's current approach to AI is marked by a profound policy paradox that helps explain why its private AI sector is lagging behind the US and China. While the EU invests billions of euros in public funds to build world-class supercomputing and AI-related infrastructure, its restrictive digital regulations constrain the data needed for its private AI economy to flourish. These regulatory restrictions deprive European start-ups of essential inputs such as data, undermining the development and deployment of AI in the EU [...]