On 10 March 2026, the European Parliament adopted the resolution “Copyright and generative artificial intelligence – opportunities and challenges” addressing the relationship between copyright law and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and calling for stronger protection of creators in the development and deployment of AI systems.
The resolution emphasizes the need for greater transparency regarding AI training datasets, the development of licensing mechanisms for AI training data and fair remuneration for rights holders, while reaffirming that copyright protection in the EU remains grounded in human authorship.
1. Background: Generative AI
The resolution defines Generative AI (“GenAI”) as a category of AI systems capable of generating new content based on training using very large datasets - such as text, images, music, audiovisual works and code. These datasets frequently contain material collected from the internet and may include copyright-protected works.
The Parliament notes evidence of widespread unauthorized scraping of copyrighted content, including the use of pirated sources and the failure to obtain licenses from rights holders.
The resolution also reiterates a fundamental principle of EU copyright law: copyright protection is based on human authorship. As a result, content entirely generated by AI without human creative input should not qualify for copyright protection and should therefore remain outside the scope of copyright law.
2. Key Policy Directions emerging from the Resolution
a. Greater Transparency regarding training datasets
The Parliament calls for stronger transparency obligations for providers of generative AI models, considered essential for enabling rights holders to verify whether their works have been used without authorization.
In particular, AI developers may be required to:
b. Development of a licensing market for AI training
The Parliament emphasizes that rights holders must retain effective control over the use of their works in AI training and other AI-related uses, including inferencing; retrieval-augmented generation; the production of AI-generated content that may compete with the original works.
The resolution encourages the development of machine-readable opt-out tools allowing creators to exclude their works from AI training datasets.
Where no opt-out has been exercised, the Parliament encourages the European Commission to facilitate the development of sector-based licensing mechanisms enabling AI developers to access high-quality training data while ensuring fair remuneration for creators and rights holders.
In particular, the resolution highlights concern regarding the news and media sector, noting that AI systems may divert traffic and revenues from original publishers. It therefore suggests that AI providers may be required to provide fair, proportionate and non-discriminatory compensation to news outlets where their content is exploited.
Parliament also raises the possibility of extending ancillary rights for press publishers and other media actors, potentially within the framework of voluntary collective licensing schemes, while preserving the possibility for rights holders to pursue individual licensing arrangements.
Finally, the resolution invites the Commission to examine whether fair remuneration mechanisms should also address past uses of copyrighted works in AI training where no licensing market previously existed.
c. Territorial application of EU copyright rules
The Parliament stresses that EU copyright law should apply to AI systems placed on the EU market, regardless of where the training of those models takes place.
Under this approach, the principle of territoriality would ensure that EU copyright rules apply whenever generative AI models are made available within the EU, even if the relevant training activities occurred outside the Union. This aims to prevent AI providers from circumventing EU copyright rules by training models in other jurisdictions.
d. Role of EUIPO
The resolution highlights the potential role of the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) as a trusted intermediary in the AI ecosystem.
In particular, EUIPO could:
3. Conclusions
The European Parliament’s resolution represents an important step in the ongoing debate on the interaction between copyright law and generative AI technologies. Although it does not introduce binding rules, it reflects growing concern within EU institutions regarding the use of copyrighted works in AI training and the potential impact of generative AI on the creative sector.
This resolution signals the EU’s intention to promote a regulatory framework capable of balancing technological innovation with transparency and fair remuneration for creators, while ensuring that AI development remains fully compliant with existing intellectual property rights and the principle of human authorship.
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Click HERE to download the European Parlament resolution (2025/2058 (INI)).