Francophonie 4.0 Forum

I once again had the pleasure of being invited by the OIF to take part in a panel discussion as part of the first edition of the Francophonie 4.0 Forum, to discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on employment and to offer the specific perspective of the cultural industries. As part of a panel bringing together experts from the worlds of research and business, moderated by Professor Hugues Bersini (ULB) and alongside speakers such as Olivier Bertrand (Polytechnique), Carl Mörch (FARI – AI for the Common Good Institute ULB-VUB), Asmae Ben Bahida (Just BIM It) and Philippe Araujo (Yulcom AI UK).

During our discussions, I began by pointing out that the widespread replacement of creative professionals by machines – which had been feared during the Hollywood screenwriters’ strike in 2023 – had ultimately not come to pass. Screenwriters are still in their jobs and have even managed to regulate the use of these tools through a landmark agreement. On a macroeconomic scale, AI has mainly been integrated as an assistive technology, triggering a restructuring of the labour market rather than its collapse. Whilst certain professions have been disrupted – such as subtitling in video-on-demand or the creation of special effects in video games – the crisis currently affecting the cultural sector stems far more from pre-existing economic and political changes than from the advent of AI. The massive budget cuts currently affecting the cultural sector – as exemplified by the recent withdrawal of funding by certain local authorities in France – serve as a reminder that these difficulties stem primarily from purely political decisions, rather than from an inevitable technological trend.

On the other hand, I felt it was essential to point out that the ‘magic’ of AI relies, above all, on the opaque and unpaid exploitation of copyright-protected works. This reality is, in fact, fuelling heated parliamentary debates today between copyright advocates on the one hand and supporters of technological innovation on the other. However, this upstream plundering is accompanied by a second, downstream shock in the form of a glut of artificially generated content, which risks saturating the online cultural offering. By diverting the public’s attention, this proliferation renders human creativity invisible and directly threatens creators’ incomes. The phenomenon is particularly striking in the music industry, where, according to the latest figures from Luminate, 150,000 AI-generated tracks are added every day to music streaming platforms worldwide, which risks further reducing the share of the pie set aside for artists’ remuneration when they attract a massive number of streams.

Faced with the collapse of production barriers and the resulting tsunami of content, the greatest challenge for the Francophonie has therefore changed in nature: it is no longer simply a matter of successfully producing works, but of ensuring that they remain visible. In keeping with the remarks I have made at every event to which the OIF has had the pleasure of inviting me since 2019, I have once again emphasised the need to assess the situation objectively and in practical terms, for example by equipping the Organisation with a proper statistical observatory tasked with measuring the discoverability of Francophone works on online cultural services, across the audiovisual, music and publishing sectors.

I would like to extend my warmest thanks to Mr Mamadou Bamba Hanne, the OIF’s Representative to the European Union, for his invitation, and to Yves Nassouri and his entire team for their hospitality.