On Wednesday, 42 German organizations and trade unions representing more than 140,000 writers and performers requested the European Union to strengthen proposed artificial intelligence legislation, citing ChatGPT as a danger to their rights.

In a letter to the European Commission, European Council, and EU parliamentarians, the creative industry trade unions Verdi and DGB, as well as groups for photographers, designers, journalists, and illustrators, expressed their worries.

The letter underlined the growing worries about generative artificial intelligence (AI) such as ChatGPT which can mimic humans and create text and images based on prompts.

“The unauthorized usage of protected training material, its non-transparent processing, and the foreseeable substitution of the sources by the output of generative AI raise fundamental questions of accountability, liability and remuneration, which need to be addressed before irreversible harm occurs,” the letter seen by Reuters said.

“Generative AI needs to be at the center of any meaningful AI market regulation,” it said.

The European Commission, which last year proposed AI rules, will in the coming months thrash out the final details with EU lawmakers and member states before the rules become legislation.

The rules should be beefed up to regulate generative AI across the entire product cycle, especially on providers of foundation models, the groups said.

They also call for providers of such technology to be liable for all content generated and disseminated by the AI, in particular for infringement of personal rights and copyrights, misinformation or discrimination.

The letter said providers of foundation models such as Microsoft, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Meta Platforms should not be allowed to operate central platform services to distribute digital content.