A/80/278 or consent, and without communities being informed about all the consequences. 31 Data inventories for AI systems, including cultural data, are rarely built in participatory, transparent ways, nor are they guided by human rights frameworks. The amount of energy used to gather and sustain such data is catastrophic for the environment. Moreover, most of those platforms are governed by a small number of actors, often from the Global North, whose worldviews and economic interests shape the systems’ design, reinforcing existing biases and structural inequalities. Never before have communities envisaged that their lives would become data to be used in such an unlimited and opaque way. 18. Such data is kept by big corporations and used in any way they see fit, with profit being the main goal. The visions, values and cultural references embedded in that data are not interpreted by the source communities, and the ethics of their usage are not discussed; creative works are used without any consent or acknowledgement, which poses serious questions regarding the respect due to cultural rights. Music is taken in a piecemeal way without any regard for the original owner or its meaning or importance. Communities’ designs are taken without any consent and are sometimes altered in an arbitrary way. Drawings, pictures, photographs and any materials – whether sacred and important, or not – are stored and considered meaningful only as parts of this profit-making endeavour. For example, ChatGPT has enabled users to transform Internet memes or photographs into the distinct style of the founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki, even though he has been explicitly opposing AI for decades. 32 Individuals’ records, stories and vulnerabilities are stored without consent or emotional engagement, only to be disseminated when and as the new “owners” decide, not for the benefit of humanity, but for economic benefits that, it is hoped, may also benefit humanity. There is no effective right to appeal and no right to ask that data be erased, not reproduced or not stored in the first place. 19. International human rights law has not been effective in restricting AI systems from indiscriminately collecting data, even despite new legal instruments at the international level, including the Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law, which establishes legally binding obligations with respect to compliance of AI activities with human rights; the Artificial Intelligence Act of the European Union, which prohibits a number of AI-related practices and establishes transparency requirements; and the Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy of the African Union, which highlights the risk of appropriating and misrepresenting Indigenous knowledge. The Special Rapporteur is concerned that the loss of cultural rights in collecting data is not the focus of scrutiny by legislators and human rights organizations, even though data collection is advancing at a rapid pace. 20. Several court proceedings are currently under way, but they involve big companies fighting over who will control and benefit from the data of the creative work of individuals. In the United States, the concept of “fair use” is invoked by AI developers to justify training their models on billions of works (texts, images, music) without compensating rights holders. Fair use is an affirmative defence in copyright law that permits limited use of copyrighted material without perm ission from the rights holder, typically for purposes such as criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship or research. In February 2025, a court in the United States of America rejected an AI developer ’s fair use defence, arguing that the use was __________________ 31 32 8/21 See UNESCO, “Operational guidelines on the implementation of the Convention in the Digital Environment”, 2017. In para. 8.9, it is stated that respect for the right to privacy is a sine qua non condition for the creation, distribution and accessibility of diverse cultural expressions. See www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/hayao-miyazaki-studio-ghibli-aitrend-b2723358.html. 25-12403