In the EU, generative AI (GenAI) systems can be trained on works protected by copyright (under a text and data mining exception introduced in 2019 in the Copyright Directive), provided the rights holders have not reserved their rights (opted-out) in an appropriate manner.

To ensure that the reservation of rights by rights holders leads to their fair remuneration, the AI Act introduced specific requirements for providers of generative AI models to:

• have a policy in place about identifying and respecting opt-outs by rights holders;
• publish a sufficiently detailed summary of the content used for training, so that rights holders can check respect of their opt-outs.

Notwithstanding these clarifications introduced by the AI Act, the debate around AI and copyright remains controversial, mainly due to the fact that:

• EU rules provide no indication of what manner is considered "appropriate" to opt-out. In practice, rights holders use different opt-out systems;
• No licensing mechanisms exist at the EU level to compensate rights holders for use of copyright material.  

The EU Commission is expected to review the Copyright Directive and to evaluate possible improvements in 2026. 

Cullen International’s new benchmark tracks the national initiatives (legislative or non-legislative) that are taken at country level on top of these EU-wide rules. 

These include for instance national intiatives that: 

• interpret EU legislation and the data mining exception;
• facilitate the licensing of copyright protected works for use in GenAI; or
• protect artists from the creation of digital replicas of their voice, image or performances without consent.

Among the covered countries, these topics are addressed by:

• legislative provisions, in Italy (adopted), Finland (discussed), France (on hold), Spain (withdrawn) or government’s guidelines (Sweden);
• consultations (France and the UK);
• experts working groups (Finland, France, Ireland and the UK);
• governments’ strategies (France) or similar (coalition treaty in Germany);
• studies commissioned by public authorities (France, Germany, the Netherlands).

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