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How can Europe sustain original journalism, research, art, and culture in the age of AI? How can we balance democratic oversight, fair remuneration, and technological progress without concentrating power in the hands of a few AI providers?
On 14 October 2025, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung’s Future of Work programme and Open Future co-hosted “Sustaining Original Content in the Age of AI” at TownHall Europe in Brussels. The event built on Open Future’s Beyond AI and Copyright white paper and explored practical solutions beyond copyright and existing EU regulation.
Prof. Alexandra Bensamoun (University of Paris-Saclay) and MEP Tiemo Wölken opened the event with keynote addresses moderated by Paul Keller. Their insights set the tone for a panel that bridged journalism, culture, civil society, and EU policymaking. The full recording is below—if you’re short on time, scroll down for the key takeaways.
Prof. Alexandra Bensamoun presented a three-pillar framework to address the challenges facing creators. As she emphasized, “Without transparency, rights become like empty shells.” Her approach includes pre-litigation mediation to resolve disputes efficiently, a rebuttable presumption of use when serious indicators exist, and targeted disclosure orders that protect trade secrets while providing access to essential evidence.
MEP Tiemo Wölken highlighted the current inequities: “While at the moment only large right holders with bigger legal departments can defend their interests, smaller actors are left behind. And the opt-out of text and data mining isn’t working.” He also cautioned that “Copyright enforcement tools should not be usable to practice press censorship or undermine freedom of speech.”
The panel explored solutions beyond traditional copyright frameworks.
Renate Schroeder (Director at European Federation of Journalists) stressed that “Journalism is a public good.” She noted that 80% of advertising money now goes to big platforms, leaving journalism financially vulnerable. “The losers are the public who have the right to be informed and to be informed in a way that’s not full of hallucinations and toxic news,” she warned.
Stefan Kaufmann (Policy Advisor at Wikimedia Deutschland) distinguished between generative AI that emulates human expression and systems that provide verifiable knowledge. He cautioned that “Connectionist models can emulate statements that sound plausible, but they lack the ability to deterministically provide knowledge that is true — and justified.”
Ioan Kaes (General Secretary at AEPO-ARTIS) challenged the feasibility of public AI infrastructure, questioning how much of the recently announced €50 billion investment would actually support public AI versus private partnerships. This led to an interesting discussion on what constitutes public investment and what defines public AI.
Giuseppe Abbamonte (Director for Media Policy at European Commission, DG CONNECT) argued that public AI should focus on specialization rather than competing with large general-purpose models: “A realistic and strategic goal of any public AI infrastructure should be to achieve fit-for-purpose performance by focusing on specialization… developing models optimized for European needs such as multilingualism, legal and scientific domains.” He emphasized that public AI must offer “a compelling and differentiated value proposition” including guarantees of privacy, ethics, accuracy, and reliability.
The conversations in Brussels reinforced a central message of Beyond AI and Copyright: ensuring that AI benefits society means investing not only in technology, but also in the people and institutions that create public knowledge. Effective rights enforcement, fair business models, and public AI infrastructure must work together to sustain Europe’s cultural and informational commons.
