“If our work is creating value for you, then value us.” Creators at CISAC’s conference insist they want to work with the AI sector, not be bulldozed by it.

CISAC's 2026 General Assembly in Paris marked the organisation's centenary, but this was a day that did not allow itself to become cushioned in cosy nostalgia; rather it was focused on taking important lessons learned from the past and using them to navigate the future.

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The day opened with a keynote from CISAC President and ABBA co-founder Björn Ulvaeus where he discussed the aesthetic and emotional importance of human creativity, considering how generative AI, the grand motif of the day, should and (more importantly) should not intersect here.

"Does the source of art matter?" he asked rhetorically. "If a piece of music moves you, genuinely moves you, and reaches something real inside you, does it matter whether a human made it? If you close your eyes and something passes through you, some recognition of grief, of joy, or longing, and you later discover it was assembled by a machine, does that change what happened to you? Does it unhappen?"

This is the philosophical crux of AI, a technology Ulvaeus says he uses in his own songwriting, calling it "a fantastic tool" that "opens up new possibilities and helps me to explore ideas faster". He insisted that he does not want to reject technology, but rather to consider the parameters that should be put around it.

"Human creativity is not just expression," he argued. "It is testimony. A life lived. The song is not just a product. It is evidence."

AI is, he noted, language-based and can "outperform many humans"; but music is where art goes beyond language and expresses something far beyond words. This, he said while paraphrasing philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, is what AI "cannot fully colonise".

He praised the UK government's recent move, after lobbying from the creative sector, to scrap a proposal that would have required creators to actively opt out of having their work mined by AI. He then pointed to the upcoming GEMA versus Suno case in Munich as being of enormous importance. "If Suno wins, every licensing deal in the AI music space collapses," he cautioned. "If it loses, licensing becomes the law of the land, a historic fork in the road, and we are standing at it now."

He concluded by outlining the challenges ahead and why it is critical for the creative sector to ensure creators work with technologies but are not erased by them. "What we do in the next few years will determine whether, when this settles, there is still an ecosystem in which human creators can exist, make a living, and pass something of themselves to those who come after, whether they do it in collaborating with AI or not," he said. "That is the work. It has always been the work."

The power and importance of human creativity was central to the keynote by Spanish singer-songwriter Vicco, especially in how it is being impacted by streaming economics. "We spend a lot of time trying to reach our audience to create songs that transcend us," she said. "The competition is huge, the availability of resources is enormous. Now we depend on an algorithm, and when we get a song to play many times in a certain way, those thousands, even millions, of plays translate into minimal income."

This is now, she said, under threat "if we allow the works of millions of creators to be used without authorisation, without transparency, and without remuneration to feed commercial AI systems". AI technology on its own is not the burning issue, she said, noting how many musicians actively use it themselves. What is paramount is how it is implemented and policed.

"It is part of our creative process, but we also need rules, we need transparency, we need consent, and we need technological progress to move forward whilst respecting those who make culture possible," she insisted.

Daren Tang, director general of WIPO, opened his video address by playing Hoagy Carmichael's 'Stardust' from 1927 on piano, noting it was, until the release of 'Yesterday' by The Beatles in 1965, the most-covered song in history. This was his link to celebrate the strong partnership between his organisation and CISAC to both protect copyright and work on projects to help artists bring their art to the world.

"Let's continue celebrating the role of the human creator, the role of human emotions, and how human life helps us to bring beauty to this world," he said. "WIPO will stand strongly with CISAC for the next one-hundred years in order to make sure that the human creator, human music, and human creativity stand at the center of the corporate system and the IP system, and that technology serves us."

Dean Ormston, CISAC chair of the board and CEO of APRA AMCOS, talked of the importance of the creative sector speaking in one voice in order to get governments around the world to listen to them, their needs, and their concerns. "The Paris Commitment adopted here today is our promise to the future generations of human creators," he said. "As a demonstration of this Paris Commitment, today we raise our global voice in support of the Darcos Bill and call on France to adopt this legislation without delay, introducing a presumption of use of creative content by AI platforms."

CISAC's director general, Gadi Oron, used the organisation's anniversary to reinforce how many of the issues CISAC was set up to grapple with are still alive today, just with different technologies applied. The year after CISAC's founding, the film The Jazz Singer was released and, as it used synchronised sound, Hollywood tried to insist that the film was not entitled to any royalties as this was a new creative work.

"We hear the same argument again, only this time it's from artificial intelligence companies," he said. "They claim that royalties are not due to copyright owners and to creative works, because what they are doing is transformative. Just like the film companies of the late 1920s, the AI companies argue that they've created something new. They want to use creative works, but they don't want to pay for them. They want to generate profits from using human creations, but they want to keep all these profits for themselves."

He said creators must embrace change and adapt to new market realities, but their rights should still be protected. "The future of creativity will not be written by algorithms, it will not be written by machines, it will be written by human creators," he said. "Together it is our responsibility to ensure that their voices, their rights, and their creativity continue to shape our worlds for the next one-hundred years."

Mihaly Ficsor, former assistant director general of WIPO, talked of the complexities around provenance for gen AI output, especially as it clashes with free market thinking in certain markets.

"What could be in an AI treaty by WIPO?" he asked. "I think the chance is not very good for various reasons. The atmosphere in WIPO is a little bit over-politicised or ideologised. And then the competition aspects dominate. That is because, in certain countries, copyright is just considered in this way a gesture [and seen as] not so important. We are dealing with economic and political competition."

This was followed by the panel discussion AI & Human Creativity: The Creators' Perspective. Music creator Simon Franglen spoke of his fear that whole generations of music creators will be wiped out if gen AI is allowed to flood DSPs as it becomes a discovery conundrum. "If there are one-hundred million gray pieces of music on top, then it becomes much harder to find Kind Of Blue, or 'Helter Skelter', or The Rite Of Spring," he said.

He also starkly warned that AI is already negatively impacting the background and library music sectors. "My other major problem is that it will entirely kill the bottom third of my business within two or three years," he cautioned, saying this has long been an important training ground, and an early revenue stream, for composers. "When I started out, I started writing jingles, writing commercial music, writing for kids TV shows. That was essential for me, because those first ten years of my career are where I learned, but somebody else paid for me to learn."

Music creator Jacopo Ettorre was less dystopian in his attitude. "I'm not scared that much by AI," he said. "Of course, we have to control it, we have to govern it. On the other hand, it's a new tool, and musicians have always had fun with new tools, like synthesizers, like samplers, like computers."

Yvonne Chaka Chaka, musician and CISAC VP, burst into song to illustrate a critical point about the importance of the human creator. "AI cannot be spontaneous," she said. AI is good for production, she accepted, "but it must never threaten human creativity", insisting that legislative frameworks are put in place to ensure "big tech companies are not there to just take from the creators".

Ángeles González-Sinde, audiovisual creator and CISAC VP, said AI presents an economic problem in that, if it runs unchecked, it threatens the livelihood of musicians. She added there is an ideological and a semantic battle taking place. "[Tech companies] are trying to sell us the idea that if you oppose AI, you oppose progress, and you oppose innovation, which is this magical word that is a key that opens all the doors to governments and institutions who are in awe of innovation - but innovation is in the hands of private corporations," she said. "These private corporations want to make money, and, of course, it's a direct threat to rights."

To balance this out, creators need to be involved in all discussions here. "One thing that is really important, and it's not happening today, is that creators are at the table where these decisions are being taken," she insisted.

Newly elected to the position of CISAC VP, singer, musician and songwriter Youssou N'Dour, warned that those serendipitous small human connections in the creative process will be lost if the machines take over. "Everything goes back to the human aspect and the fact that we are all together," he said. "That is threatened by AI." He added that it is not just the careers of musicians that are at stake here - the very idea of creativity is also at risk, but he was insistent the sector should not implode in defeat and scepticism. "Governance scares me, job losses scare me, and the loss of creativity scares me," he said. "I'm worried, I'm concerned, but I'm not afraid."

Visual artist Adelaide Damoah said the industry needs to be able to negotiate with AI companies without obfuscation. "These things are trained on humongous data sets where we cannot conceive of the amount of information that these things are trained on," she argued. "That means that if there's no transparency in terms of what images, what music, what text is going through these systems, then we, because we don't have the knowledge, cannot go to the organisations that represent us and negotiate from a place of knowledge."

Policy makers need to understand just what is at stake here, she said, and AI companies need to properly value human creativity. "It's nothing but greed - and that needs to be curbed," she argued of the current AI gold rush. "As far as I'm concerned, if you're making money from our work, that means that our work is creating value for you. If our work is creating value for you, then value us. It's that simple."

In his presentation, economist Will Page put a $47.2bn total value on global music copyrights, saying this had grown from $25bn when he first crunched the numbers a decade ago. "When you speak to your prime ministers, your presidents, that's the number to use," he advised when lobbying governments.

He praised the publishing sector for engaging with AI before the record labels did, flipping the way licensing used to be done, where record companies would barge to the front of the licensing queue and leave songwriters with the crumbs. As a result, they are starting to see deals based on parity, rather than deals where recorded music took the lion's share.

"This room, this audience is moving first, not last, when it comes to engaging with this new technology," he said.

The panel that followed Page (The Creative Economy Put to the Test) picked up on several of the themes he raised. Javed Akhtar, screenwriter, lyricist and chair of IPRS in India, talked about the changing world, and licensing terms, of Bollywood. "Perhaps ten or fifteen years back, ninety-five per cent of music that was sold in India was from films," he said, noting how the biggest studios would push to take ownership of music, but this is now changing. "Today, no contract in India can take away the right to royalties from the creator. New contracts that have taken away the rights in perpetuity are null and void in the Indian courts."

Anya Unger, filmmaker and president of LaScam, spoke of a new value gap opening up in how music is used in TV and films in the age of Netflix and Disney+. "I think everybody thought that the cake we get paid from will grow with more ways to show our works," she said. "But the cake did not grow, meaning we have to cut it into more little pieces, and every author ends up with a tiny piece of cake, and that's quite disappointing."

Annette Barrett, president of IMPF and MD of Reservoir Media UK, stressed the importance of unity in the creative sector to ensure fair treatment. "We will have to work very closely together," she said. "We will have to support each other - the songwriters, the publishers, the CMOs - and be very transparent. In this market, and in these days, it's more crucial than ever. We have to work together and support each other."

Alexis Lanternier, CEO of streaming service Deezer, spoke of how DSPs are tackling not just AI slop but also the rise of fraudsters trying to use AI music to syphon money out of the royalties pool. He referenced data that showed just 0.5% of streams are of people listening to pure AI music. "One way to look at it is that it's not very high," he said. "On the flip side, it's coming from zero. So in one year it's growing, and it's very hard to tell how big it could become."

Cristina Perpiñá-Robert, CEO of SGAE, talked of the importance of being realistic in how to handle AI. "There is a perception that AI is a complete threat, and we should ban it," she said. "That is completely ridiculous."

Akhtar picked up on this and said patchwork systems of territory-specific laws are ultimately unworkable. "Music doesn't respect territorial borders," he said. "Music, if it is made in a small town of India, within five minutes it can reach LA. So you need international laws - and international laws should not be anti artificial intelligence. If there is a choice between artificial intelligence and natural stupidity, then I'm on the side of artificial intelligence. But at the same time, artificial intelligence should be fair. I expect fairness."

On this point, Barrett pressed home the importance of getting licensing deals in place as soon as possible. "It's here and it's getting faster and faster," she said, "We all need to work together and to support each other. Transparency is the big thing."

Delivering her afternoon keynote, Sylvie Forbin, deputy director general, copyright and creative industries sector at WIPO, explained the importance of data to the AI business. "[Everything] now rests on access to data - the new white gold of our times," she proposed. "Data is what feeds AI models, determines what they produce, what they value, and what they render invisible."

A wider concern for her, however, was how AI companies are egregiously pressuring copyright owners to be complicit in the handing over of all their data. "It sounds like a fairly reasonable proposal: give your data to our systems or your cultural identity will be absent from AI," she explained. "This narrative contains a grain of truth, and that is precisely what makes it appealing. But this is an illusion. By focusing on the risk of exclusion and marginalisation, it glosses over a much deeper bias - that of the machine itself. Large AI models do not process content in a neutral way."

The final panel of the day Our Future: Public Policies and Cultural Support as an Antidote, grappled with issues around public policies and cultural support. Former British MP, Lord Kevin Brennan, explained why he became so passionate about working to protect the creative sector. "I always started from the premise that ever since somebody said to a musician, 'Sing into this horn and I'll give you a dollar,' musicians have been ripped off and songwriters have been ripped off," he said. "That's my view, and always has been. And I think whatever technological change comes along, there's an element of that going on."

MEP Emma Rafowicz said she came into politics for similarly noble reasons. "I think that when you are working for culture today you know that you are actually working for democracy," she said. "I believe that democracy is really in danger right now, so I decided to fight for culture."

Irini Stamatoudi, a professor at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, says the future can only be secured through collective work and with everyone singing from the same hymn sheet, something that has held the creative sector back in the past. "I think we would have achieved a lot more if we were all in unity and we were all coordinated instead of having different views as to how we need to solve the problem," she argued. "I think somehow CMOs, creators and the policy makers who want to be active in this area, need to coordinate and decide as to what is the best way forward. And I think that there we do have a problem."

Brennan emphasised the importance of copyright laws and intellectual property as they were enshrined in legislation to reward and protect human creativity. This stands in stark contrast to how he viewed the creative contribution of AI.

"AI creates nothing," he insisted. "AI generates mathematical probabilities. It's a desiccated calculating machine. It has no soul. It can produce a very convincing, but, ultimately on its own unsatisfying, facsimile of human creativity. It doesn't create anything. It generates possibilities and probabilities. Therefore using it as a tool is fine. Using it as a servant of creativity is fine. But if it becomes our master, then it's not fine. In my view, anything ultimately that is purely generated through a machine, or overwhelmingly generated through a machine, should not be copyrightable, because copyright doesn't exist for that purpose."

The day's closing discussion saw Cécile Rap-Veber, the CEO of SACEM in France, interview musician and composer (and former CISAC president) Jean-Michel Jarre about many of the day's themes, especially around how creators use technology.

Rap-Veber took issue with AI companies trying to use 'publicly available' with regard to art as a free pass to act with impunity. "This is where there is a big misunderstanding," she said. "Publicly available does not mean free of rights."

Jarre asserted that "human creativity is the foundation of AI" and, as such, the creative sector "deserves to have a part of this digital cake - not as only as suppliers, but as partners".

He said all new forms of technology in the history of music have served to enable new forms of creativity. "Technology is also a tool for democratisation," he said. "AI is, of course, a fantastic tool and a fantastic opportunity. We shouldn't consider AI as a threat. But at the same time, all the tech people and the world of politics should not consider that we are conservative vis-à-vis progress and the future. We should never forget that regulations and rules are actually a means of access to freedom."

For him, the world of musicians should not be fearful of the impact AI will have on real, human art. It is about adapting to new technologies and harnessing their creative potential.

"I think the next Miles Davis, the next Bad Bunny, the next Billie Eilish have nothing to be afraid of," he said. "As creators, what makes our creations original and unique are actually accidents - and the fact that we are all thieves. I'm stealing everything that I watch, everything that I read, everything that I listen to. Then what's interesting is also to hijack technology. I think in ten years from now, we'll probably consider that the 2020s were a golden age for AI, because AI is like the beginning of silent movies. It's full of glitches, accidents, and limitations."

Ultimately, art must be protected and technological innovations encouraged, but not permitting the former to happen wholly at the expense of the latter. "We should never forget that what makes a country or a civilisation worthy is culture," he said. "Culture is not weakening profits."