I move: That Dáil Éireann: recognises that art is the product of the labour of artists, informed by their unique human experience, creativity and skill reiterates Article 27.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that "Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author"; affirms that the constitutional property rights of our writers, composers, performers, actors, and artists include the intellectual property of their works and performances, the royalties from which form an integral part of the income they earn from their labour; notes with concern that the social impacts of low pay, precarious work and poor working conditions have been identified as endemic to the arts sector in Ireland since the late 1990s, according to research commissioned by the Arts Council of Ireland, and demonstrated in research conducted as part of the pilot basic income for artist’s scheme; and commends the work of the Irish Music Rights Organisation, the Screen Composers Guild of Ireland, The Ivors Academy, the Irish Recorded Music Association, the Irish Writers Union, Irish Equity, Recorded Artists Actors Performers, the Digital Creative Industries Forum, the Association of European Performers' Organisations (AEPO-ARTIS), the European Composer and Songwriter Alliance, the International Federation of Actors, among other organisations, and of individual artists for defending the rights of Irish artists, authors, creators and performers against exploitation and misuse, and for highlighting the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) developments on rights holders; expresses alarm that: - the use of generative AI systems that rely massively on protected content not only reproduce work without authorisation from, or remuneration for, the rights holders affected by such use, but may also result in the provision of products and services that directly and unfairly compete with those of the rights holders; - generative AI systems, by massively and inexpensively creating content that mimics what was produced by human creativity, competes directly with the work of creators, particularly of cultural and media content, and that this competition may lead to a decline in the quality of online content as a result of creators disengaging, and thus to an overall decline in human cultural and creative production; - a study on the economic impact of Generative AI in the Music and Audiovisual industries by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers (CISAC) in 2024 found that AI would put 24 per cent of music creators' revenues at risk by 2028, a cumulative loss of €10 billion over the next five years; and - generative AI systems are used to massively generate outputs used to commit streaming fraud, with music streaming service Deezer finding in April 2026 that up to 85 per cent of the streams generated by fully AI-generated tracks in 2025 were fraudulent, and that 75,000 fully AI-generated tracks are uploaded to Deezer every day, representing roughly 44 per cent of total daily uploads; notes that a majority of European Union (EU) member states responding to a consultation by the Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU into lessons learned on Article 15 of the Directive of the Digital Single Market Copyright (DSMC) Directive and on fostering a well-functioning framework for licensing in the age of AI called for immediate action to increase transparency and facilitate licensing; criticises the European Commission for withdrawing the proposed AI Liability Directive, which would have established a new civil liability regime for AI including disclosure obligations and a rebuttable presumption of causal link between such systems and harms; notes with concern that: - the implementation of the copyright-relevant obligations of the AI Act, through the Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI providers and the template for the transparency summary, has not led to effective solutions for rights holders to enforce their rights and is thus insufficient; - the opt-out mechanism under Article 4 of the DSMC Directive has not delivered meaningful control for rights holders in practice; and - the extension of the text and data mining exemption under Article 4 of the DSMC Directive to AI training has in effect authorised the mass ingestion of protected content to build commercial systems that directly compete with, and in many cases displace, the very creators whose work made those systems possible; supports the creation of collective licensing models, ensuring robust opt-out mechanisms, fair remuneration to authors and performers, and transparency for creators as recommended by the Government's AI Advisory Council in its advice paper on The Impact of AI on Ireland's Creative Sector; supports, in particular, the recommendations adopted by the European Parliament in its resolution of 10th March, 2026 on the opportunities and challenges relating to copyright and generative AI as they relate to the rights of artists, including: - that the current copyright law is insufficient to address the challenge of licensing copyrighted material for generative AI and an additional legal framework is needed; - those who use generative AI models and systems and do not observe copyright, should be barred from the market; - a framework is needed for transparency and source documentation on the use of copyright-protected work or other protected subject matter, including for opt-out compliance; - a coherent and functioning licensing framework must be established in respect of the use of content protected by copyright or related rights, to enable the fair remuneration of creators for the exploitation of their copyright-protected content by generative AI models; - a rebuttable presumption should be established that, for any generative AI model or system placed on the EU market, works and other subject matter protected by copyright or related rights have been used for the purposes of training, inferencing or Retrieval-augmented generation, where transparency obligations have not been fully complied with; and - content fully generated by AI that does not meet the established criteria for copyright protection should remain ineligible for copyright protection; and calls on the Government to: - use the opportunity of our Presidency of the Council of the EU to draw attention to and lead efforts to resolve these issues, including through the organisation of a dedicated conference focused on protecting the copyright of artists in the context of generative AI; - introduce legislation domestically, while also seeking agreement at EU and international level, to establish the appropriate framework for licensing, transparency, fair remuneration, anti-impersonation personality rights, collective bargaining, civil liability and opt-outs required to protect the copyright of Irish artists in the context of generative AI; and - ensure that no State funding for art is spent on content production by AI, and that the livelihoods of human Irish artists continue to be supported; and includes representation for the arts sector on the AI Advisory Council, and that the AI Office of Ireland and other mechanisms for developing policy recognise creative industries and copyright as areas of special interest and ensure creative industry representation. CMAT, Kneecap, Colm Tóibín, Sally Rooney and even my name are all names you will find on The Atlantic's AI Watchdog website, whose writings and songs have been pilfered for artificial intelligence, and there are many millions more. It is an interesting website people should look at to see the names of local artists, writers, poets and others who pop up there and to see the scale of the pilfering and robbery of their creative talents. Agus mé ag cur fáilte roimh na healaíontóirí agus na heagrais ealaíon atá san Áiléar don díospóireacht seo inniu, glacfaidh mé nath ar iasacht ó bhuaiteoir an duais Ivor Novello, Iain Archer, a dúirt nach féidir an abhainn a choimeád siar i dtaca le hintleacht shaorga. There is no holding back the river when it comes to artificial intelligence. AI is already here and is flooding the world with text, songs and videos on an unprecedented scale; some call it AI slop. The question is how we deal with this flood to ensure our artists do not sink beneath the waves of the scale of the AI flood. That is the premise of the motion before the Dáil today, which calls on Ireland to lead the world as we did before in the arts. Copyright was invented in Ireland and is the arc on which we can save our artists from the flood. When Colmcille copied a book lent to him by Finnian, a bloody battle ensued. Thousands died and Colmcille was forced into exile when a famous judgment of the Rí, Diarmait mac Cerbaill, said, "Is le gach bó a lao, agus is le gach leabhar a chóip", to every cow its calf, to every book its copy. A millennium and a half later, with Ireland serving as the President of the Council of the European Union, it is the same law we want to see enforced in the era of AI. In the words of the author Scott Turow, in paraphrasing The Atlantic's Alex Reisner, the bold future promised by AI has been "created with stolen words". We are living through the greatest art heist in history. The entire corpus of global achievement in writing, music, film and the visual arts is up for grabs and is being used and abused for corporate greed. Whole books and poems are being garbled up and plagiarised in output presented as original work. Vocals are being stripped from recordings and backing tracks sold without permission. Entire singles generated without humans attached, and not even labelled as AI, amount to 44% of uploads of music on the streamer Deezer. Spotify has even had to remove 75 million tracks in the recent past, such was the volume of AI slop tracks that had been uploaded. Whole personas, voices, faces, identities and styles have been cloned without consent, and Bollywood has seen a tragic film re-release with an AI happy ending, with neither the director nor lead actor being consulted; there was not a penny for the original creators, performers or artists. Worse still, human artists now need to compete with this AI-generated work to make a living. Profit moguls push the private sector to cut the cost of human work in favour of AI slop. The public sector is also guilty, opening up the opportunities humans once relied on to so-called AI innovation. An Post released an AI-designed stamp and Údarás na Gaeltachta held an AI film competition. Theft is being rewarded and creativity is being punished to the tune of €22 billion globally in music and film, according to the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers. The European directives are no longer fit for purpose because of the exemptions granted to train AI. This is not simply Sinn Féin's view but also the view adopted by the European Parliament in March, as well as most member states during the Danish EU Presidency. Abandoning Commission proposals to reform the civil liability regime for AI could have helped artists and others besides. We must lead the charge for action at European level now but there are things we can do here at home. We need representation for the arts sector in every AI policymaking body, and we need no State funding for our art and content produced by AI. The livelihoods of human and Irish artists need to continue to be supported. Domestic legislation needs to be established for an appropriate framework for the licence transparency, fair renumeration, personality rights to guard against impersonation, collective bargaining and civil liability on upsales and much more.

Sentiment score: 0.14

Gabhaim buíochas le gach Teachta, ealaíontóir agus eagras a bhí linn inniu. I thank everybody who was with us today, some of whom are still with us, and those who contacted us in advance of this debate and are watching online who shared their stories about the impact AI was having on their work and creativity and to show their support for this debate. I am humbled and grateful for their support. I will try to name all of the organisations but I apologise in advance for those I will probably leave out - Irish Music Rights Organisation; Screen Composers Guild of Ireland; the Ivors Academy; Irish Equity; International Federation of Actors; Recorded Artists, Actors, Performers; Irish Recorded Music Association, Disabled Artists, Disabled Academics; Praxis: The Artists' Union of Ireland; First Music Contact, the Music and Entertainment Association of Ireland; the Arts Council; Musicians' Union of Ireland; Screen Producers Ireland; Give Us The Night; Beta Festival; and many individual artists, especially those who shared their experiences in the past day or two with the media to outline their experience of AI and how it is robbing their work, competing against them and robbing their royalties. Emilie Conway of Disabled Artists, Disabled Academics pointed out earlier that today was Bastille Day and in the revolutionary spirit, it is worth looking at what the French have achieved in protecting the arts. Even if the focus tonight is on sport, Victor Hugo led the campaign that delivered the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, which will mark its 140th anniversary on 9 September. International law was finally catching up with what was already in Ireland, having been established in the 6th century AD. It is thanks to the outrage in 1889 in France when a bidding war raised huge profits for the owner of a painting by the artist Millet while his family lived in poverty that the idea of droit de suite or resale rights brought royalties to artists. People then were not happy to sit back and let artists go without while their work created income and profit for the wealthy. That stands true to this day. That spirit continues in France where the national centre for cinema announced it would not fund art without a human author or where AI replaced a human creative role. That spirit continues in Ireland. In this motion, we say that State funding for the Irish arts must be for humans and not for AI. It is incumbent on the Government and the State agencies to act in line with the unanimous will of the Dáil on this motion. Bhí líne den scoth sa leabhar Ag Caint Linn Fhéin, a scríobh Joe Steve Ó Neachtain, laoch an Ghluaiseacht Chearta Sibhialta na Gaeltachta agus ealaíontóir ildánach, "Is é an croí atá i gceol na hÉireann a dhéanann náisiún mór den náisiún beag seo ar fud an domhain." Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam. Tír gan ealaín, tír gan chroí. Tá ár gcroí i mbaol ag an intleacht shaorga. Tá dualgas orainn go léir seasamh suas ar son ealaíontóirí na hÉireann, an croí a léiríonn siad sa ghníomh agus an cur chuige a dhéanann siad a thugann gliondar chuig a lán daoine sa tír seo agus a thugann léargas ar leith don domhan ar fad ar cad atá i gceist againn mar Éireannaigh. Tá sé go maith go bhfuil an Rialtas ag glacadh leis an rún seo agus nach bhfuil aon duine á chur ina choinne. Anois tá orainn bogadh de réir an ghnímh sin. We have to act according to this motion, rather than just pass it.

Sentiment score: 0.16