Guest of Honour Speech by Mr Edwin Tong SC, Minister for Law and Second Minister for Home Affairs at IFRRO World Congress 2025 General Assembly

Introduction

1.                 Good morning everyone.

2.                 Just wanted to make a couple of preliminary remarks before I go into the formalities. The fact that we’ve got so many delegates from across the world, 70-odd different jurisdictions, coming from different parts of the world, with different legal systems, different perspectives, and different levels of development and maturity in the way in which we look at IP, protecting content creation as well as intangible assets (IA), I think simply underscores the value and the common platforms that you would seek out to discuss all of these issues that arise.

3.                 I think that’s a really important segue to start this morning. Before that, I’d like to say a very good morning to Ms Tracey Armstrong, President of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organisations (IFRRO), Ms Anita Huss-Ekerhult, Chief Executive and General Secretary of IFRRO, Ms Sylvie Forbin, Deputy Director General of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Mr Bemanya Twebaze, Director General of the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization, of course Mr Andrew Fong, Chief Executive Officer of the Copyright Licensing and Administration Society of Singapore (CLASS).

4.                 It is a great privilege to be invited here this morning to speak. I know I am in very distinguished company, and I feel almost a little bit intimidated because I’m speaking on a topic that I feel I know something about, but I think I am really in a room with all the experts here, so I’m sort of dwarfed by all the experience that all of you have.

5.                 So forgive me, but I’ll share some of my thoughts on what I see is a key topic at the conference today: Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its impact on the intellectual property (IP) ecosystem.

6.                 As I said in my opening remarks, this is extremely timely and very important. With the ever-increasing use and development of AI around the world, and the implications it has for existing copyright frameworks, rights-holders, users, and policymakers, content creators, even the audience, all of us alike are navigating the intersection of copyright protection and technological development.

7.                 Allow me to take this opportunity to share some remarks and thoughts about the use of AI in Singapore, to share our experience and how we have navigated the process and how I believe organisations like IFRRO, and every individual member of IFRRO can play a key role in supporting AI development. This is not a one-country or one-jurisdiction initiative for us to develop this system into a common platform that requires collective arrangements and buy-in of different jurisdictions around the world.

8.                 The importance of IFRRO, with your mission to develop and promote effective collective rights management, is really important. Even as technology evolves, and it does continually evolve, and advances, the copyrights of authors and publishers must continue to be valued. That is a fundamental premise. Technology will move, AI will be different tomorrow. It was different five years ago, five months ago. It will be different in five years’ time. I think the fundamental platform of what we do must be anchored on the basis that copyrights of authors, content creators, publishers must continue to be valued. If that’s our lodestar and North Star, then I think we will fit the framework around it, we will be able to get it.

9.                 Fair compensation for creators ensures the sustainability of the creative economy. It’s a virtuous cycle. If you do not fairly compensate creators for what they produce, after a while, they will drop off the ecosystem. There will no longer be good creators. So, we believe that it’s a self-reinforcing cycle. If you provide fair compensation, there is a clear, transparent, well-governed framework, then a sustainable creative economy will continue to grow.

10.              Today, IFRRO has indeed grown to include over 160 member Reproduction Rights Organisations (RROs), from around 90 countries around the world. This represents millions of authors, visual artists, and publishers. So, you stand at a very unique and useful vantage point of being able to see developments across the globe, and I am sure that there are some lessons that Singapore can draw from your experiences.

Use of AI in Singapore

11.              AI has had a profound implication on the way we work, live and play, and the way in which we do almost everything daily. Although I can assure you that this speech was not AI-generated.

12.              But globally, the use of AI is really no longer limited to just tech firms, or what we regard as tech wizards. It is now adopted by diverse industries to streamline and automate processes.

13.              In Singapore, we have developed our second National AI Strategy. We came together to start one a couple of years ago and we now have the second National AI Strategy, or what we call NAIS 2.0. This represents our newest and our latest commitment to realising the benefits of AI, such as helping enterprises and public agencies enhance their productivity.

14.              We have also developed frameworks to protect public interests and build consumer trust, whilst ensuring space for innovation, and I think this is important. As we advance in AI, the public will be grappling with a quickly evolving platform that is high-tech, that is driven by change and external forces. But at the same time, we cannot overregulate. So, we create sandboxes where appropriate. We create space for innovation, but at the same time, having a fundamental platform to ensure that there is a baseline that consumers will feel that they are in an environment that they can trust, and I think that is important to ensure.

15.              So we updated our first Model AI Governance Framework, which started in 2019. We updated it for Generative AI, or GenAI for short, in 2024. This, as I had said earlier, helps us to identify areas where governance can be strengthened, to promote and encourage more subscription into AI, more trust, and to address emerging concerns.

16.              Today, we are seeing how AI has become an essential tool for enterprises and workers in Singapore. I thought I will give you some numbers to share with you. AI adoption amongst our small and medium enterprises (SMEs), essentially the smaller businesses largely existing in the heartlands, small corporates, doing retail businesses. 14.5% of SMEs adopted AI in 2024 and that is up from 4.2% in 2023. I would hazard a guess that if we took a straw poll at the end of this year, I think that number would also have grown. Further, 85% of workers who use AI tools reported improvements in productivity, in time savings, and in work quality.

17.              AI applies in a range of different front-end and back-end processes. Sometimes it is to deal with rostering, payroll, scheduling, or looking at things which are mundane, which helps to keep manpower costs and utilities down.

18.              At the same time, we are also looking to use AI to uplift communities and improve lives. The Singapore Public Service has been using AI, leading very much on the front foot to use AI to increase efficiency and deliver better frontline services for our citizens.

19.              Turning to the arts sector, that is an area I still feel very passionate about. Before my current designation, I was previously the Arts and Culture Minister, and I am at a unique spot where I can see an intersection between the arts and culture, and the use of intellectual property rights to promote the growth of a sustainable creative economy. 

(1)               Singapore has initiatives, to provide learning opportunities and resources, to help the sector make the best and full use of technology.

(2)               For example, we started the Arts x Tech Lab launched by the National Arts Council, supporting innovation and experimentation through facilitating collaboration between arts and technology practitioners.

(3)               In fact, in one of its projects which I encourage you to look up – “The Sound of Stories”, three local artistes in Singapore used AI to explore delivering stories in different languages, whilst maintaining the original voice and cadence of the human storyteller.

20.              These efforts are part of a broader vision to integrate technology into the arts, fostering an ecosystem where creativity and innovation can go hand in hand.

Generative AI (GenAI) and IFRRO’s relevance

21.              At the same time, at an event like this, I think I speak for all of us here, when I say AI presents perhaps the most profound implications for copyright since the advent of digital technology. It is a challenge.

22.              Since the introduction of GenAI models, such as ChatGPT, which is very much retail and frankly, exists almost on everybody’s phone today, to the general public,

(1)               AI development is driving unprecedented change across the creative economy by disrupting traditional models of creative production and compensation.

(2)               Unlike previous technological disruptions that mainly affect the distribution of works, the way in which we copy, produce, and proliferate works, GenAI engages directly with the essence of human creativity. It goes to the core of the creation of content.

(3)               As we are well aware, through prompts from users, GenAI can create stories and images, very lifelike – crafts which used to be in almost exclusive domains of humans.

(4)               This in turn has led to questions about the role of humans in the creative process, and how the creative industry might be disrupted, leading to loss of jobs and income for creative professionals.

(5)               Furthermore, many GenAI systems also train on vast datasets containing millions of copyrighted works, and creators and rights-holders have raised concerns about the use of content for training of AI models.

23.              These concerns are very understandable, and the way to addressing them is to first understand and appreciate that these concerns are real concerns, and they strike at the heart of the creative profession.

(1)               They reflect deeper questions about livelihoods and artistic integrity in the creative process – concerns that deserve serious discussion and consideration.

(2)               At the same time, amidst this huge disruptive force that is now upon us with GenAI, this technology also presents us a unique opportunity to rethink, redesign, and also redevelop business practices, in a way that both preserves the centricity of human creativity, and also helps us to unlock new sources of value.

(3)               With the appropriate frameworks in place, human creativity and technology can both progress and flourish.

24.              Recently, I was appointed Advisor to the Visual, Audio, Creative Content Professionals Association of Singapore (VICPA), and last week, I had a very engaging dialogue with a group of creative freelancers.

(1)               It was clear to me that the creative economy is doing very well in Singapore. We have amongst the best creatives – artistes, front of house, back of house, stage engineers, sound engineers, lights and so on, we have got amongst the best in the world. But it is clear that the creative community in Singapore, they do hold mixed views about AI. Some, quite rightly, fear job displacement, the impact of copyright issues, and the erosion of creativity, but others do see it as a powerful tool to complement and elevate and amplify their work.

(2)               I shared my view that the process of creation is often as important – if not sometimes more important – than the output itself. Whilst AI can generate content quickly, what it lacks is the emotional depth, the cultural context and nuances, and intent that humans bring to the creative process. In Singapore, we are well-known for being multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and being an intersection of multiculturalism allows us to bring out in artworks, something that I believe, even with the most advanced ChatGPT models, they are still unable to bring out, because it is an appreciation of the culture and the context in which the culture takes place. The true value lies in the journey of ideation, experimentation, and refinement. For example, an artist using AI tools might experiment with different styles or compositions or mood or genres, but it is the human decisions about how to refine, what to refine, where to shape these elements that define, and ultimately produce the work’s unique creative essence. AI serves as a tool to enhance and elevate, not replace, the artist’s vision.

25.              Indeed, VICPA, in collaboration with the Singapore Polytechnic and with the support of SkillsFuture Singapore, has recently conducted a study on ‘The Future of Creative Freelancers in Singapore: Navigating the Impact of AI and Emerging Technologies’. I think this research will yield very interesting and useful findings on how to guide us on both the framework that I talked about earlier, that allows us the space for innovation and sandboxes, but also creating safe spaces for consumers to appreciate and consume new technology.

26.              I think this is where IFRRO can play a pivotal role in supporting rights-holders, while creating a conducive environment for further AI innovation.

IFRRO’s role in bridging AI developers with rights-holders

27.              I understand that IFRRO issued a leaflet in March this year, advocating a licensing-based approach, which benefits both rights-holders as well as AI developers, creating a mutually beneficial outcome that sustains AI innovation.

28.              For rights-holders and creators, they may get additional revenue streams based on the use of their works in AI training datasets. They may also control the terms and boundaries for how their works are used. This allows them to ensure, for example, that their work is not misrepresented or associated with inappropriate AI-generated output. Licensed partnerships can also result in AI tools, specifically designed to assist creators in their field of work, such as design tools that incorporate the artists’ techniques.

29.              For AI developers, licensing enhances the quality and reliability of training datasets, as these can contain properly curated content with clear provenance as well as rights information.

30.              In short, licensing solutions can align the interests of different parties, and create new growth opportunities that maximise the potential of technology development.

31.              On this topic on licensing solutions, I understand that Anita recently co-authored an article titled “Pro-Copyright, Pro-AI: The Power of Collective Licensing”. I encourage all of us to be acquainted with the article, but in short, the authors argue that AI-specific collective licenses provide a way to reconcile technological innovation with respect for copyright. Indeed, the title of the article itself suggests that the two goals are not at odds with one another. They might well be very complementary.

32.              But even beyond this, I think we can go a little further, because text and image-based works contribute greatly to the fabric of society and culture, education, for example. Properly harnessing AI benefits not just authors, creators and technology companies, but the broader ecosystem contributing to knowledge and identity-building. So it’s not just pro-copyright and pro-AI, but I believe it can also be pro-community, especially in a jurisdiction like Singapore – multi-faceted, multi-cultural fabric of our community.

33.              Further, as AI development is inherently global, licensing solutions, I believe, must also work across different jurisdictions. We cannot afford to have different systems operate in different parts of the world, as far as possible, where you can then encourage creators on one hand or those involved in technology to arbitrage against one another. So where various jurisdictions may have different copyright laws and cultural attitudes towards creative rights, we do have to find a way in which we can make the licensing solutions amenable and standardised as far as possible across different jurisdictions.

34.              International cooperation, facilitated by organisations like IFRRO, therefore becomes essential in this exercise, in developing licensing frameworks. For example, IFRRO’s extensive network of member RROs provides the infrastructure, to facilitate licensing agreements that benefit creators worldwide. IFRRO can also serve as a central coordinating body, working with its member RROs, to create streamlined licensing processes that reduce administrative burden for AI developers. And finally, I believe, IFRRO can also consider establishing platforms, to bring together AI developers and creator communities, for more constructive dialogue and partnership.  I think, it often does start with a simple dialogue. In my own experience, at the VICPA dialogue, it brought home some of the most intimate concerns, and I think it allows us to, as policy makers, as regulators, to have a deeper insight into the issues which stir as well as trouble the creative economy.

Conclusion

35.              Finally, as I close, I just want to take a few moments to say that it is really a rare opportunity, as I look around the room, to have such a large group of experts and industry practitioners all gathered in one space, discussing and espousing ideas and sharing best practices on a really important topic.

36.              As we continue to navigate the opportunities and challenges presented by AI - and they will not change, I was just quipping to Tracey as we were walking to this ballroom that the dialogue that we might have on the same topic this time next year could very well be very different, in content, as well as in development. I encourage IFRRO and your member RROs to continue finding solutions that facilitate technological progress, while at the same time, allowing rights-holders to be fairly rewarded, wherever they are.

37.              As we collectively work towards building a balanced and sustainable copyright regime, that supports creativity and innovation, we look forward to the insights and best practices, that will be shared at this conference. So I encourage you not just to share know-how, but I think it is important, on an occasion like this, with 70-odd different jurisdictions represented here, for you to also share networks, build networks, make friends across different jurisdictions, because I don’t think any one of us has a monopoly over good ideas in a very fast-changing and rapidly evolving world of AI. So sharing those ideas, coming together, understanding the challenges of different jurisdictions, but finding common platforms and common solutions will really be one major achievement today at this conference.

38.              With all  that, I wish all of you a really enjoyable stay and productive IFRRO World Congress. And for those of you visiting Singapore, I hope that you’ll make some time to see Singapore, and I hope that we are as warm as the weather has been for all of you, in our hospitality as well.

39.              Thank you very much.

Last updated on 28 October 2025