RESPONSE TO CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND CREATIVITY

The response paper explores the emergence of generative AI and its profound impact on creativity, particularly in music and cultural arts. It highlights how generative AI can accelerate creative processes and expand artistic horizons, but also introduces significant ethical, creative, and legal concerns, including human employment, cultural heritage, and the artistic economy. Generative AI works by identifying and replicating patterns from existing databases to produce original content.

 

The paper highlights two key areas of impact:

 

The Music Industry: AI has transformed the music industry, leading to innovative opportunities but also ethical considerations regarding songwriters' rights and the use of copyrighted material. The Concord Music Group v. Anthropic case exemplifies these issues, where the AI company Anthropic PBC was accused of copyright infringement for using lyrics to train its AI, Claude. This case raises the critical question of whether AI model training itself constitutes copyright infringement and has implications for traditional licensing and royalty systems.

Indian Cultural Art Forms: With India’s vast cultural heritage, AI introduces risks such as cultural distortion, misrepresentation, and exploitation. AI tools, while aiding artists in areas like Indian classical music and dance, often fail to capture the emotional essence, depth, and cultural significance of these art forms. This can lead to "digital orientalism," where AI-generated content confuses Indian and Western elements, replacing culturally sensitive details with Western-based ones.

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Despite its potential, AI integration presents challenges, including the devaluation of artistic skill and the potential for artists to be replaced. It threatens cultural diversity, enables commodification of human art without authentic authorship or benefit, and blurs lines between authentic talent and imitation. Marginalized communities are particularly vulnerable, facing digital exploitation and cultural erasure, often lacking legal recourse.

To mitigate these risks, the paper advocates for a balanced regulatory framework. This includes "Cultural use licensing" that requires Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for integrating traditional knowledge into AI datasets, ensuring profit-sharing. It also calls for a comprehensive intellectual property protection framework for community-based art forms, national digital registries, and the inclusion of indigenous voices in AI governance and decision-making. The conclusion asserts that a collaborative approach, involving stakeholders from creative industries, technology, and civil society, is essential to safeguard creative integrity and support cultural preservation while embracing AI's transformative potential.