Artificial Intelligence and Platforms: Contracts as the New Battleground

Source: Il Sole 24 Ore – “Artificial Intelligence: The Ministry of Culture Intervenes on Platform Contractual Clauses”, 17 December 2025

When AI enters contracts, it is no longer just a technological issue

The Il Sole 24 Ore article highlights a significant development: the Italian Ministry of Culture (MiC) has intervened regarding the contractual clauses proposed by major streaming and audiovisual platforms on the use of artificial intelligence. This is not an abstract debate about innovation, but a concrete issue of contractual power, concerning who decides how, when and under what conditions AI may be used within creative processes.

The starting point is clear: certain clauses, while formally acceptable, may in practice open the door to extensive and poorly controllable use of creative content by platforms, to the detriment of authors.

The risk of “invisible constraints”

Undersecretary Lucia Borgonzoni explicitly refers to “insidious constraints”: contractual provisions that, under an apparently neutral reading, may legitimise the exploitation of creative content through AI systems without truly informed consent. This is a crucial point, because it shifts the issue from the technological sphere to the legal one: AI becomes a lever that reshapes the balance of power between global platforms and individual creators.

In this scenario, the contract is no longer an instrument of balance, but the place where asymmetry is crystallised.

Whoever controls AI controls the creative process

The MiC’s intervention insists on a fundamental principle: the creative process must remain under the control of authors. The use of artificial intelligence tools can be legitimate, but only if it remains a guided, reversible and conscious choice. Otherwise, the risk is a gradual expropriation—AI not as support, but as a mechanism for extracting value from creative content.

The issue is not banning AI, but preventing the normalisation of implicit rights transfers through standardised contractual formulas.

From audiovisual to digital: a systemic problem

The audiovisual sector is only the first front. The same dynamics are already visible in other digital domains: journalism, social platforms, search engines and cloud services. When artificial intelligence enters contracts without clear rules, the risk is always the same: turning innovation into an opaque redistribution of power, benefiting a small number of dominant actors.

The MiC’s attention signals that this issue can no longer be postponed and that AI governance also—and above all—passes through contractual texts.

Why this matters for Algopolio

Algopolio operates precisely at this intersection between technology, law and power imbalance. Defending authors today means defending a broader principle: that artificial intelligence must not become a tool to circumvent protections, compress rights or hollow out decision-making responsibility.

AI is not neutral when embedded in contracts. And when rules are written by those who control the platforms, public and collective oversight is not an obstacle to innovation—it is a condition of justice.