DANNY O’DONOGHUE has lent his support to a motion proposed in the Dáil this week to protect Irish artists against the rise of AI.
The Script frontman was in Leinster House as the Sinn Féin motion was debated on July 14 during the party’s private members’ business time.
The motion was proposed by Aengus Ó Snodaigh who is the party’s spokesperson for Gaeilge, Gaeltacht, Arts and Culture.
In it he demands action be taken to protect the livelihoods of Irish artists whose copyright is being undermined by the use of artificial intelligence.
“Irish artists are being ripped off,” Ó Snodaigh, the TD for Dublin South Central and a former Chair of the Oireachtas Culture Committee, said.
“Their copyrighted work is being used, without their consent and without any remuneration, to build systems that spew out ‘AI art’ which directly competes with them.”
He added: “This is making it even harder for writers, composers, musicians, performers, actors and other artists to make a living in a field where so many already struggle, and where royalties from copyright are vital to their income.”
Speaking ahead of the debate, Mr O’Donoghue said he had recently discovered that more than 100 of his tracks had been ‘scraped’ by AI companies to help train the technology to make music.
He described this as “intellectual property theft on an industrial scale”.
Ó Snodaigh is urging the Government to move to “protect the copyright and incomes of artists, to ensure no state funding for art is spent on content produced by AI, and to place the creative sector at the heart of decision-making when it comes to AI policy”.
He added: “The economic impact of AI is significant in the arts.”
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