Building the brain, protecting the art

As the European Union unveiled a billion-euro push to build homegrown artificial intelligence and reduce reliance on foreign technologies, a parallel battle is unfolding in India, where Hollywood and Bollywood studios are lobbying for tougher copyright safeguards to prevent AI companies from feeding on their creative content.

Both moves — though continents apart — reveal a growing global unease over the unrestrained power and reach of AI systems, as governments scramble to define who controls, benefits from, and is protected against the next wave of machine intelligence.

In Strasbourg, the European Commission announced on Wednesday that it would mobilise €1 billion ($1.6 billion) to strengthen the continent's position in the fast-evolving AI race. The funding, drawn largely from the EU's Horizon research programme, will target critical sectors such as pharmaceuticals, energy, transport and defence.

The initiative is part of a broader strategy to wean Europe off dependency on AI technologies from the United States and China, whose companies currently dominate the global landscape.

Brussels said the investment will support the development of "European AI-powered tools," including specialised models for autonomous vehicles, advanced cancer screening centres and other high-tech industries.

"I want the future of AI to be made in Europe," European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen declared. "Because when AI is used, we can find smarter, faster, and more affordable solutions."

The bloc's technology chief, Henna Virkkunen, said the European Commission aims to ensure that by 2030, 75% of European businesses use AI — a sharp increase from just 13% reported last year.

"Where possible, companies should favour European solutions," she said, while acknowledging that total independence from foreign AI providers remains a challenge.

Europe's renewed industrial strategy includes plans for AI "gigafactories" and a tripling of data centre capacity across the bloc, positioning the continent as a credible competitor to Silicon Valley and Beijing's tech giants.

But Brussels' ambitions come with a warning: its new policy framework highlights "external dependencies of the AI stack" — the layers of infrastructure, software and data required to develop AI — as potential national security vulnerabilities. Such dependencies, it cautioned, "can be weaponised," threatening Europe's supply chains through state or non-state actors.

While Europe is betting big on creating its own AI backbone, India is grappling with the opposite problem: how to stop global AI companies from exploiting the vast troves of copyrighted material produced by its entertainment industry.

Letters reviewed by Reuters show that Hollywood and Bollywood groups are lobbying an Indian government panel for tighter copyright protections that would require AI firms to obtain licences before using movies, TV shows, or other creative works to train their models.

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) — which represents giants like Warner Bros, Paramount and Netflix — and the Producers Guild of India have urged New Delhi not to dilute existing copyright law in the name of AI innovation.

In an August letter to the panel, MPA India Managing Director Uday Singh warned that granting broad exceptions to AI companies could "undermine the incentive to create new works and erode copyright protection in India." Nitin Tej Ahuja, CEO of the Producers Guild, echoed the sentiment, saying, "Licensing copyrighted works is essential for creators' revenue and business sustainability."

India's commerce ministry formed the panel earlier this year, comprising government officials, lawyers and industry representatives, to determine whether current copyright law — drafted long before AI's rise — can cope with the technology's complexities.

At the heart of the debate is whether AI firms should be allowed to train their models on copyrighted data without explicit permission. Japan, for instance, allows broad exemptions, whereas the EU grants content owners the right to opt out. The MPA and Indian film guilds argue that India should follow the latter path, prioritising the rights of creators over unregulated AI innovation.

The film industry's fears are not unfounded. AI tools capable of generating videos and digital likenesses have already sparked a wave of lawsuits and ethical outcry worldwide.

In September, Warner Bros sued the AI company Midjourney in Los Angeles, accusing it of "brazenly stealing" copyrighted characters such as Batman and Bugs Bunny to generate images and clips. Midjourney insists its use of copyrighted material falls under "fair use" — an argument hotly contested by rights holders.

In India, concerns have become personal. A Bollywood couple recently took YouTube to court after AI-generated deepfakes of them spread online, highlighting how quickly AI manipulation can spiral out of control in a country with more than 800 million internet users.

Hollywood and Bollywood representatives fear that without explicit licensing requirements, AI platforms could freely scrape copyrighted content from the internet — including pirated material — effectively training their models on unauthorised creative works.

"Exceptions would hinder future investments and development of high-quality local content," MPA India argued, adding that an opt-out system would unfairly shift the burden onto studios to police hundreds of AI platforms.

The debates unfolding in Brussels and New Delhi underscore how different regions are tackling the same underlying problem: how to harness AI's potential without losing sovereignty, control, or creative ownership.

For the EU, the priority is industrial independence — ensuring Europe's future technological foundations are not beholden to American or Chinese systems. For India, the goal is cultural protection — making sure its creative industries, among the world's most prolific, are not cannibalised by unregulated AI scraping.

Yet both cases reflect a broader shift: AI is no longer viewed merely as a tool but as a strategic resource — one that can shape economies, influence culture, and even alter power dynamics between nations and corporations.

As Brussels channels billions into "made-in-Europe" AI, and as Indian policymakers prepare to tighten copyright reins, the global AI ecosystem appears to be fragmenting along national and ethical lines.

The United States continues to champion a looser, innovation-driven model, while the EU favours a rights-based, regulated framework. India, meanwhile, is still deciding where it stands — balancing its ambitions as a rising AI hub with the demands of its powerful entertainment sector.