C’est Presumé: France’s AI Copyright Shortcut
Generative AI strains nearly every layer of copyright law. Policymakers have focused most on one pressure point: the use of copyrighted works to train AI models. Fitting that practice into a legal framework that supports both creative industries and the AI sector has proved difficult.
Against that backdrop, a recent French Senate proposal would add a striking procedural innovation. It creates a presumption that AI systems used protected works whenever there is a plausible indication of such use. In practice, that shifts the burden of proof in civil cases. Plaintiffs would no longer need to show their works were used in training or deployment. AI providers would have to prove they were not.
At first glance, the idea has intuitive appeal. It responds to a well-known problem in AI litigation: information asymmetry. Model developers control the key facts—training data, model architecture, and deployment. Rightsholders and other outsiders often lack visibility into whether and how their works were used. Seen this way, the proposal aims to rebalance evidentiary burdens in light of technological change. Done carefully, that approach could benefit both creators and AI developers.
The details matter. The French proposal collapses distinct categories of evidence into a single trigger for burden shifting. That choice carries significant consequences for how the rule would operate in practice.