Artist Rights Symposium V will examine how AI (artificial intelligence) data centers affect communities and connect with artists’ concerns about the use of their work.
The panel takes place on October 19 at Tweed Recording in Athens, Georgia, bringing together community, public policy and artist rights perspectives.
The symposium is hosted by the University of Georgia Terry College of Business Music Certificate Program, the School of Policy and International Affairs, and the Artist Rights Institute.
Panel participants
The discussion will feature:
- Ansley Brown, a community advocate whose family home was taken for data center infrastructure.
- Georgia State Senator Sonya Halpern.
- Dr. Moiya McTier of the Human Artistry Campaign.
- Moderator Chris Castle of the Artist Rights Institute.
A family home and transmission lines
Brown became a public advocate after a proposed multibillion-dollar hyperscale data center development threatened her family’s home in Coweta County, Georgia.
Georgia Power sought to use eminent domain to take the property for transmission lines serving data centers. Brown described the loss of her childhood home in a public message:
Today is the day we say goodbye to my childhood home. Soon to be demolished by Georgia Power for the data centers. Thank you to ALL of you, we wouldn’t be so gracious about it if it weren’t for all the support.
Brown has described the displacement as having to rebuild the life her family created elsewhere, while hoping another AI development would not threaten the new location.
Infrastructure and creative work
The panel will explore AI’s demand for land, electricity, water and transmission infrastructure alongside its use of human creative work to develop products.
It will consider the costs borne by communities and creators when homes, farms and intellectual property become resources for AI businesses, while recognising that the legal questions differ.
Artists have protested data centers near the Nashville Zoo and pursued lawsuits over unauthorised AI use of their work and personhood.
Songwriters, recording artists, musicians, actors, writers and other creators have had their work used in AI systems without consent or compensation. AI-generated content also competes with the human work used to develop those systems.
