Björn Ulvaeus, CISAC President and ABBA co-founder, gave his most detailed lecture yet about AI and creators while delivering the keynote speech at the United Nations’ AI for Good Summit in Geneva. The full speech can be seen here, and the full transcript can be read here.

Among his key points, Ulvaeus cautioned against focusing too much on licensing the outputs of AI-generated music models.

“I think it misunderstands how these models work,” Ulvaeus said. “What comes out isn’t a copy of any one song. It is a new synthesis built from everything the model has learned.”

“For me, tracing the output was always the wrong question. The right question is much simpler. It is about the training. Our works went in. We should be paid for what went in, not for every output that comes out the other end, but for the raw material that made the machine what it is.”

“A share of AI subscription revenues could flow back to the creators whose work trained these systems. Managed collectively, just as collective licensing has worked for more than a century. The infrastructure already exists. The principle is already established,” Ulvaeus continued. “What is missing is the political will to require it for everyone, not just those powerful enough to sue.”

“If human creators cannot earn a living, fewer people will devote years to mastering an instrument, finding their voice, or writing songs that matter, and if that happens, AI itself will eventually have less original new, human creativity from which to learn. Fairness is [not just] morally right; it is how we keep the well from running dry.”

“So I say to the companies building these extraordinary systems: you have built remarkable things. You could not have built them without us. That makes us partners. We deserve a place at the table. We deserve a share of the harvest,” he concluded. “Human creativity is not the enemy of artificial intelligence. It is the reason artificial intelligence exists. The future does not require us to choose between creators and technology. It requires us to decide whether creators remain partners in the future they helped build.”