The European Commission opened a targeted consultation on 29 September on how technology is affecting copyright. One of its four strands is “the use of copyright-protected content in artificial intelligence”. The other three cover piracy of live events, equitable remuneration for music performers and producers, and copyright in scientific research. Responses are due by 3 November 2026.
The Commission is explicitly asking generative AI providers and others in the AI value chain to respond, alongside rights holders, intermediaries and researchers. Its framing is that the EU “already benefits from a robust copyright framework”, but that market developments may call for “potential additional measures”.
Worth being precise about what this is not. It is a call for evidence, not a draft law, and the Commission does not name a legislative instrument it would feed into. Consultations of this kind sometimes produce nothing, and the timeline from here to any proposal is measured in years rather than months.
Even so, the question being asked is the live one. The EU AI Act already requires general-purpose model providers to respect the text and data mining opt-out, and rights holders have argued since it passed that the opt-out is unenforceable in practice. This is the process in which that argument gets heard, while courts on both sides of the Atlantic reach their own conclusions.