💰 AI Developers May Be Required to Remunerate Rights Holders

The corresponding amendments to the Civil Code and the Law on AI were drafted by a working group of the Presidential Council for Codification and Improvement of Civil Legislation, chaired by Pavel Krasheninnikov.

The proposed draft eliminates the current provision allowing the free use of protected materials and the creation of temporary copies for training sovereign and foundational models. Under the new rules, the training process itself will be formally classified as a form of use under copyright and related rights laws.

The bill establishes a transparent framework for interactions between tech companies and content creators:

• Right to Opt Out. Rights holders will be able to publicly prohibit the use of their materials for AI training by placing a notice directly on the work, an associated web resource, or a dedicated portal operated by an authorized government agency.
• Compensatory Payments. In the absence of an explicit opt-out or a separate agreement permitting royalty-free use, developers will be legally obligated to pay remuneration.
• Broad Scope. The payment requirement will extend beyond developers of major national models to encompass any party conducting the training or fine-tuning of neural networks.

The procedures for collecting funds, as well as the calculation of rates and distribution schedules, will be determined by the Government of the Russian Federation. The amendments are scheduled for review by a working group on regulation and administrative barriers led by Deputy Minister of Digital Development Ivan Lebedev, with final proposals expected by late September.

According to estimates by experts at the HSE University, without regulatory safeguards, cumulative losses suffered by authors and rights holders due to the proliferation of synthetic content could reach 1 trillion rubles between 2025 and 2030.