"The idea that artificial intelligence in general will somehow be regulated in a global market seems crazy to me," writes popular self-made producer and artist Timbaland in a lookup on his Instagram profile.  

He's one of those music creators and artists who, throughout his career, has been able to take cultural trends and turn them into a marketable and groundbreaking product.  

The Danish Artist Association works tirelessly to achieve rights protection and fair payment for artists, but I agree with Timbaland so far that there are bigger issues at stake here than national legislation. Regulation is important and urgent. What's at stake is much, much bigger than the economic calculus. European politicians should look beyond market logic and also focus on the ethical consequences. 

It's urgent 

Geoffrey Hinton, the British-Canadian psychologist, used his Nobel Prize speech to warn against the consequences of the basic artificial intelligence he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for developing. According to him, there is a growing risk associated with the use of artificial intelligence because The machine becomes smarter than man. 

With the advent of AI in the music industry, it puts the individual artist up against all the world's data and artistic ideas at once.  

Our Danish Minister of Culture, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, deserves praise for the big step he has taken with the groundbreaking agreement legislative proposal on the protection of musical and performing artists.  

At the same time, the government said that during its presidency it would focus on the EU's competitiveness and military armament. The EU has pressed pause on the so-called AI actbecause they are afraid of the consequences for small and medium-sized enterprises in the EU of more extensive protection than the US and China have. But with 'fake news' and 'fake art' we are facing a breakdown of mutual trust between people and thus one of the basic prerequisites for a functioning democracy that makes Europe attractive.  

'Unauthorised learning' 

The Danish Minister of Culture has also set up a working group for AI, which has come up with a powerful and important analysis. It shows that the arts are hard to compare to other sectors and that AI is changing the landscape of music at all levels of the food chain: major global labels are signing contracts with AI services, artificial avatars are taking their place on streaming services' playlists, and inside music studios, AI has become a tool that's completely normal to use. 

AI's presence in the creative industries is unprecedented. We can easily call it theft or plagiarism, but it's more than that. Timbaland has coined a new term, 'unauthorised learning'.Perhaps it's like having found a new element that we don't know the effects and possibilities of. 

Legislation is not enough 

As long as no one really knows the full implications for the artist ecosystem, those who control the technology and infrastructure somewhere in the US can totally dominate the development and influence in the market. We risk citizens' attitudes towards AI, which used to be a fun gimmick, becoming the new normal. The mindset on which we build European rights legislation is unlikely to be able to fully accommodate it either, and will come as a reaction instead of a prerequisite.  

As with the internet and streaming, we must be careful that technological development does not become a gift for the few. More companies have become 'too big to fail', leaving nation states partially powerless against private actors.

We need to regulate as much as possible - even if it means jeopardising the EU's competitiveness. The relationship of future generations to the institutions of society, to media and to artists is at stake. How can there be trust between citizens and the system if everything can, in principle, be fake? Who should future generations look up to - people or machines created by a commercial tech giant?

The EU should become proactive about creative solutions 

EU politicians should come up with a forward-thinking and musical proposal for how we in Europe 'upgrade' the infrastructure that creates access to man-made art together with high-tech solutions that can screen for AI-produced content. There is no doubt how important it will be to provide citizens with an alternative to the algorithms and global market dominance of a few companies. In particular, it is important to ensure free, human-created art and media in the same way that we want to ensure the right to vote and freedom of speech. We cannot allow AI to bypass the most fundamental rights and prerequisites for democratic exchange. 

The comment was published by Kristeligt Dagblad on 9 February 2026