Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Europe’s biggest AI vendor, says all AI vendors operating in Europe should pay a levy for the content they employ to train their models.
Mensch floated his proposal in an opinion piece in The Financial Times on March 20.
Paris-based Mistral has made major strides over the past year, positioning itself as the primary alternative to U.S. AI vendors, and placing strong emphasis on data sovereignty for European states.
This approach is paying off, with the company attracting significant funding, as seen in its $2 billion Series C funding round last September.
Despite this success, Mensch said that Mistral — and indeed all European AI vendors — are not competing on a level playing field with American and Chinese companies.
“Major US companies in the US and China are developing their models under less than permissive or non-existent copyright rules, training them domestically on vast amounts of content — including from European sources,” he wrote. “European AI developers, by contrast, operate in a fragmented legal environment that places them at a competitive disadvantage.”
The situation has been exacerbated, Mensch said, by the fact that the current “opt-out” framework designed to allow rights holders to prevent AI companies from using content for training without permission is proving unworkable.
This scenario, according to Mensch, is serving no one, with AI companies hamstrung by legal uncertainty, and content creators taking increasingly high-profile steps to highlight how vendors are using their work with no authorization.
However, Mensch has come up with a radical proposal, which would not only go some way toward appeasing creators, but would also address the disadvantage he feels Euro vendors face.
“At Mistral, we are proposing a revenue-based levy that would be applied to all commercial providers placing AI models on the market or putting them into service in Europe, reflecting their use of content publicly available online,” he wrote. “Crucially, this levy would apply equally to providers based abroad, creating a level playing field within the European market and ensuring that foreign AI companies also contribute when they operate here.”
Mensch proposed that the funds raised would go into a central pot to support culture and new content creation in Europe, though he did not specify what percentage of revenues should be contributed. However, the Agence France-Presse subsequently quoted Mistral executive Audrey Herblin-Stoop, suggesting a rate of 1% to 1.5%.
Mensch also made clear that his idea is intended as a starting point for discussion rather than a final blueprint, and invited AI developers, policymakers, creators and rights holders to join the debate.
Currently, the European Union allows AI companies to use copyrighted materials for text and data mining, including AI training — except if a creator has “reserved” their rights.
