Two New Reports on Europe’s Cultural and Creative Sectors (CCS) in the Digital Decade

Studies focusing on mapping digital challenges and opportunities for Europe’s cultural and creative sectors.

The European Commission has published the findings of two studies on the challenges and opportunities for cultural and creative sectors in the ‘digital decade’. While not all CCS are equally impacted by digital technology, the Commission considers it important to map challenges and opportunities of digital technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) as they can have an impact across the value chain, from production to distribution and promotion.

Study on Opportunities and Challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI) Technologies for the Cultural and Creative Sectors maps concrete examples of organisations using AI across ten creative sectors: Music, Film, Video games and immersive content, News media/journalism, Book Publishing, Architecture, Museums and heritage, Visual arts, Performing arts, Fashion and design.

It provides recommendations to counter challenges in five areas, notably access to data, access to skills, transparency, collaborative ecosystems and access to finance,; taking into account the wide diversity of needs across sectors, including small players. The study also highlights the importance of data interoperability, calls on creative sectors to identify common goals and explore data standards, and recommends policymakers to foster knowledge exchange between tech start-ups and creative sectors.

Study on Copyright and New Technologies: Copyright Data Management and Artificial Intelligence looks at the impact of new technologies on the CCS from the copyright angle, and is structured in two parts. The first looks into the potential use of new technologies to improve the management of data linked to copyright-protected content, and provides ideas to increase interoperability of metadata. The second part looks into the copyright-related challenges raised by the use of AI, including possible emerging legal questions related to the interaction between the copyright legal framework and AI.

The studies were commissioned by DG Connect and contribute to Europe’s Digital Decade, the European Commission’s vision and avenues for Europe’s digital transformation by 2030. Both aim to provide creative entrepreneurs, academics, national policy makers as well as EU policy makers with concrete ideas as well as avenues for further exploration.

(This report was the subject of a RESEARCHconnect Policy Newsflash.)