Among the signatories are France, the Republic of Korea, SACEM — the Société des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs de musique, France’s music authors and publishers rights society — and Adami, France’s collective management organization for performers’ rights. All five declarations remain open for signature.
The first principle places AI systems that produce, disseminate or transform cultural works — or that are trained on them — within the scope of the 2005 UNESCO Convention on cultural diversity. The second affirms that human-created works form the foundation on which generative systems depend, and that any use of protected works for training purposes must honor intellectual property law and result in fair payment to those who hold the rights. The third recognizes the preservation of human artistic and creative employment as an enduring public policy objective. On transparency, the declaration calls for revealing what training datasets contain and where the material comes from, clear identification of content that has been generated or altered by AI, and mechanisms that give rightsholders the means to identify uses of their work and enforce their entitlements. It also reaffirms the sovereign authority of nations and regions to design and update their own cultural policy frameworks as the technology landscape shifts.
A sixth principle backs AI development in languages outside the dominant global canon, while extending rights protections covering the full creative chain – from writers and producers down to performers and voice artists – and extending to rights over likeness and voice. The declaration opens a pathway for further work within UNESCO, including a potential update to the working rules of the 2005 Convention and examining whether a supplementary protocol on creator protections, data transparency and discoverability can be agreed.
