European Musicians Object to Path of EU AI Act Implementation

Justyna Steczkowska

Thirty-one artists from across Europe posted videos today urging the EU Commission to “Stay True to the [AI] Act.” The slogan is part of a campaign that criticizes the EU’s implementation of the European Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, which the campaign’s website says “should protect artists” but that the EU is instead “watering down the legislation – failing to hold AI companies to account.”

The AI Act came into force on August 1, 2024, with most provisions of the regulation applying as of August 2, 2026. However, the regulation said that compliance for prohibited practices was to be in effect by February 2, 2025, considering “the unacceptable risk associated with the use of AI in certain ways.”

Additionally, the Commission last week published “The General-Purpose AI Code of Practice,” which was developed by 13 independent experts across four working groups and with input from over 1,000 stakeholders, according to the Commission. The governance rules and the obligations for general-purpose AI models of the AI Act will become applicable as of August 2, 2025.

In a Joint Statement issued around the time the third draft of the Code of Practice became public in late March, “Stay True to the Act” said the Code “creates legal uncertainty, misinterprets EU copyright law and undercuts the obligations set out in the AI Act itself.” The statement continued:

“Rather than providing a robust framework for compliance, it sets the bar so low as to provide no meaningful assistance for authors, performers and other rightsholders to exercise or enforce their rights. Even more fundamentally, it would also not ensure that GPAI providers comply with either EU copyright law or the AI Act.”

A number of writers, translators and journalists in the European text sector also objected to the third draft of the Code, claiming it ignored the feedback of the authors and did not put enough demands on AI companies.

The European Writers’ Council website explained that the third draft – and now, the final code – contain weak language that do not oblige AI companies to comply. For example, the final Code says “Signatories are encouraged to make publicly available and keep up-to-date a summary of their copyright policy,” whereas previous drafts called for signatories to “commit” to keeping a detailed copyright policy up to date.

Creators for Europe also amassed more than 12,000 signatures on its open letter to the Commission urging it to protect copyrighted works from unauthorized use by large language models (LLMs).  The letter, dated April 25, said creators’ rights are “being systematically eroded under the guise of ‘promoting innovation’” and called for “strong and fair regulation.”

However, representatives of AI companies were not happy with the final Code either. The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) said in a statement last week that “today’s final code of practice for general-purpose AI (GPAI) models still imposes a disproportionate burden on AI providers. That is concerning, given that this code was meant to clarify how to comply with the EU’s AI Act – a regulatory framework rushed through political negotiations and badly in need of clear guidance.”

The CCIA cited changes in the final Code such as “complaint-handling mechanisms, specific requirements for search engines, and vague processes for developing new opt-out mechanisms – all of which create additional legal uncertainty.”

The artists who posted videos today include Justyna Steczkowska, Poland’s representative for Eurovision 2025, as well as musicians from France, Finland, Spain, Romania and Portugal. While some noted they have used AI in their own creative processes, they argued that AI should be used as a creative tool and companies should not be allowed to use their original works to train LLMs.