Call For Inputs: OHCHR Call For Contributions On Artificial Intelligence And Creativity
Issued by: OHCHR
Deadline: 05 May 2025
Purpose: To inform the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights’ report, to be presented to the General Assembly 80th session
Background
Over the last decades, the digital space and the wide-ranging transformations it has triggered, including with the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI, has had important impacts on cultural rights. The way people think, and communicate and interact with each other, is increasingly mediated by digital technologies, rather than happening face-to face; the digital space and the anonymity it grants have provided opportunities to reshape representations of oneself and of groups, and develop online identities sometimes quite different from the physical world; access to a variety of information, images, researches and narratives has greatly developed, at least for those who have benefited from access to the internet and digital infrastructures.
Whilst digital spaces provides a lot of freedoms to access the information, ideas and creative contents of others, with the potential to increase interaction and mutual understanding, they also raise multifaceted challenges from the perspective of cultural rights concerning, for examples the transparency of decision-making processes about the algorithms governing access to content; the biases built into those algorithms, emphasizing certain narratives and making others invisible; the lack of diversity of languages and cultural contents; and the difficulties of verifying and of adequately recognizing sources and creators. The digital divides continue to exacerbate inequities in access to cultural resources, disproportionately affecting marginalized and vulnerable communities.
These challenges are made more acute with the development of AI and generative AI, which is positioned as an alternative method of creating contents, but with little consideration of what this might have as consequences on our understanding of the notion of “creativity”. Whereas incentive come from all sides to use AI and generative AI to produce faster results – written texts, better emails, more images without needing photographers, new music without composers, etc.-, many questions related to the ethics of these processes and the capacity of people to keep up with the accelerated tempo, remain unasked and widely unanswered. Many artists, cultural workers and heritage communities struggle with unfair remuneration and lack of recognition in digital spaces, while the rapid commodification of cultural content often undermines the moral and material rights of authors and source communities, the sustainability of cultural work, and the rights of cultural actors to participate in the decisions regarding how their work is disseminated and used.
Objectives
The importance of digital spaces and use of AI will continue to grow, representing both opportunities and challenges that would benefit from being better understood and assessed from a cultural rights perspective.
Cultural rights protect the rights of each person, individually and in community with others as well as groups of people, to develop and express their humanity, their world view and the meanings they give to their existence and their development through, inter alia, values, beliefs, convictions, languages, knowledge and the arts, institutions and ways of life They are also considered as protecting access to cultural heritage and resources that allow such identification and development processes to take place.
In order to identify relevant experiences and challenges, the Special Rapporteur has prepared a questionnaire, which is being sent out to States, United Nations agencies, national human rights institutions, academics, cultural workers and practitioners, as well as civil society organizations for their consideration. She looks forward to benefiting from the diverse views and experiences.
Key questions and types of input/comments sought
You may wish to answer all the questions or only the ones that are closer to your work and/or experience.
General
- What are the main challenges posed by AI to human creativity (understood as encompassing artistic creativity but also all other types of creativity)
- How do we understand the notion of creativity?
- Can AI generated products be considered “originals”, and if so, what are the consequences? What is artistic integrity in relation to AI use?
Policies and Practices
- Which measures have been taken to protect human creativity from threats posed by AI? What measure(s) would best achieve this aim?
- Please provide examples of good practices to promote human creativity through AI.
- Does, or should, education and artistic education include teaching of AI tools and their usage?
- How do laws protect the rights of artists and other creators regarding content used by AI? What are the rights of authors in AI generated creation? Please provide examples.
- What are the practices regarding information on AI generated content? What would be the best practices?
How inputs will be used?
Kindly limit your responses to 3,000 words and attach annexes where necessary. To facilitate their consideration, please send responses in a Word document, clearly specify the entity making the contribution on the document itself and add paragraph numbers.
The submissions received will inform the research of the consultant and the report of the Special Rapporteur. Kindly note that all submissions will be posted on the OHCHR website.
Next Steps
Input/comments may be sent by e-mail. They must be received by 05 May 2025.
Email address: hrc-sr-culturalrights@un.org
Email subject line: Submission: AI and creativity
Word/Page limit: 2000 words
Accepted file formats: Word, PDF
Accepted Languages: English, French, Spanish