... with Miguel Benavent de B (2) AI & INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Jun 21, 2025

🐦‍⬛ In the first installment of our meeting with Miguel Benavent, we shared our conversation about the right to privacy from the perspective of artists. In this second installment, we talk about intellectual property.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

at a time when their management is undergoing an existential crisis.

🐦‍⬛ What value does human creativity hold today?

🤔 As I mentioned earlier, for me, creativity is the survival of the individual in the face of “everything else,” everything that is foreign to them! And, given the state of the world and the direction in which “our leaders” (allow me this euphemism...) are taking us, creativity is that necessary, irreplaceable, and inevitable crack that allows us to escape “the box,” the status quo. Creativity has no limits, by definition!

🐦‍⬛ ¿Cuál es el papel de la llamada Inteligencia Artificial?

🤔 AI is nothing more than a powerful tool that is opening up fields of experimentation that were unthinkable until now. And as such, it allows us to explore new techniques, bring together and share knowledge and, in the right hands, foster creativity, provided that we do not confuse the means with the end, as many do or pretend to do. Today, an idea is enough to make it a reality, and AI is a powerful tool to achieve this and, going a step further, to “play with hybridization” between techniques that until now were different and (apparently) incompatible! Music, light, image, sound, etc. are elements that can be found thanks to Artificial Intelligence to better express what the creator wants—or needs—to express in their work!

Ultimately, all intellectual, scientific, or artistic knowledge is the result (conscious or not) of the historical accumulation of styles, techniques, and disciplines that come from the past. And AI brings all that knowledge together and serves it to us immediately! The only thing AI cannot do is emulate or replace the soul or human emotion, which is the (true) raw material of every artist!

🤔 I agree, and from my experience as an author, I can confirm that with Artificial Intelligence, you suddenly feel overwhelmed by the breadth of resources available. However, I find that the results obtained are not always what you want. Even more so than with the same wonderful resources, different human beings create completely different things. Ramón y Cajal said that "There is no lack of means, there is a lack of will," and here, to answer Mirlo, I also believe that the role played by AI is still in our hands. Over time, we will see how all this waste of resources and information influences us... Hopefully it will help us express that human emotion, that Soul, which I hope we know how to protect and truly value.

🐦‍⬛ Does it make sense to defend copyright on the Internet, or should artists resign themselves to working exclusively in the physical world?

🤔 Artists usually enjoy direct contact with their audience. They like to provoke themselves and provoke emotions in their admirers or fans and perceive them “live,” rather than shutting themselves away in a recording studio with only the technicians! And that's how concerts used to be, where the artist communed with their audience! But today, thanks to technology, those “physical” boundaries have been broken and the universe has grown exponentially. I remember years ago when an album was recorded with the singer in one place, the backing vocals in another, and the symphony orchestra in yet another, all “playing live.” All of this is possible today, both in the creation and dissemination of music, for example. If we add to this technologies that are yet to be explored, such as the Metaverse, Holography, etc., the question is: is there a separation between physical and virtual reality today?

When it comes to copyright specifically, the world based on it (at an industrial level with patents or intellectual property in creations, etc.) is breaking down. A DJ, to give one example, uses fragments (sometimes sounds or tiny fragments) of someone else's work in their compositions, profits from it, and it would be impossible to account for and enforce copyright. It is no longer just a problem of piracy, it is an issue that concerns artistic creation itself. And with AI (which is nothing more than a compendium of information from countless people, structured in a certain way), it is further breaking down the concept of intellectual property as something rigid and immutable, as it has been until now! In this sense, another Blockchain tool, NFTs, provides a viable solution in the current uncertainty, as it links the artist to their work, although there is still much to explore in this area, which requires legal regulation!

🤔 NFTs have definitely brought visibility to this fundamental innovation on the internet: the identification of content and authors in the digital world. We have discussed this and the friction with the physical world that you mention in this newsletter, so I hope Mirlo will leave some links below for anyone who wants to learn more.

🐦‍⬛ Below are some links on the topic in this newsletter, shared since January 2021 (please note the dates!).

And in our next news item, I will bring you the end of our conversation with Miguel and Georgina, in which we talk about Freedom of Expression, the third right that we at Smartists consider fundamental for independent artists.

Share Artists on the Internet of Value

And to say goodbye, here are some short videos: the first one contains the premonitory experience of Prince, which shows the privileged moment we are living in... The second may be interesting to watch to stablished artists who see AI use of their work for AI training as abusive, and might be asking Can artists protect their work from AI? Finally, you can have a look at the video below A History of Copyright and the Future of AI.

We encourage you to start this important conversation. There's still time!