On September 25, 2025, the new Law 132/2025, entitled “Provisions and delegations to the Government on artificial intelligence,” was published in the Official Gazette. This is the first national law dedicated specifically to AI, designed to accompany and integrate the European Regulation on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act – EU Reg. 2024/1689), already in force at the EU level. The subsequent letter b) inserts a new article, 70-septies, which concerns the use of works available online or in databases for training AI algorithms, in particular generative ones. According to this provision, it is permitted to extract texts and data from legally accessible works, exclusively for scientific research purposes and in cases where the use of the works has not been expressly reserved by the rights holder in accordance with Articles 70-ter and 70-quater of the same law.
The law will effectively come into force on October 10, 2025, and contains many important new features. Among these, the provisions on copyright stand out, addressing for the first time specifically the relationship between human creativity and artificial intelligence tools.
Article 25, paragraph 1, letter a) of the new law directly intervenes on Article 1 of the Copyright Law (Law 633/1941), clarifying a crucial point: intellectual works are protected only if they are the result of ‘human’ intellectual work. These may enjoy copyright protection even when created with the aid of artificial intelligence tools, “provided that they constitute the intellectual result of the author.” In other words, if the work is generated entirely by a machine, without any creative intervention by humans, it cannot enjoy copyright protection.
This provision is crucial because it seeks to strike a balance between two requirements: on the one hand, the need to protect authors and their works; on the other, the need to enable innovation and the development of artificial intelligence through the use of texts and data.
Another important point is contained in Article 26, which intervenes on the regulation of artistic plagiarism contained in Article 171, paragraph 1, letter a-ter) of the copyright law, extending punishability to conduct related to the reproduction or extraction of text or data from works or other materials available on the internet or in databases, including through artificial intelligence systems.
This provision aims to combat an already widespread practice: that of using protected content to train or operate AI models without authorization and without complying with legal limits. The new law therefore represents an important step towards a new balance between technological development and respect for intellectual property, which will necessarily have to adapt and grow alongside the evolution of AI.
2026 - Morri Rossetti
