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AI, Ethics, Rights & Society
AI, Ethics, Rights & Society maps the instruments and institutions that address artificial intelligence as a question of rights rather than engineering — international conventions and UN frameworks, equality and data-protection regulators, the copyright and training-data record, national rules on labelling synthetic content, and published work on AI and work, children, the environment and accessibility.
This is a switchboard. It records what each instrument provides and what each body publishes, and links to the source. It takes no position on any of them, and where authorities differ it links them rather than choosing between them.
This is the area of AI where reasonable people disagree most, so the discipline here is stricter, not looser. Nothing on this page endorses or criticises an instrument, a regulator or a party to a case. Court entries record only the procedural position on the date checked — never the merits, and never a predicted outcome.
International instruments and UN-system frameworks
Each instrument appears once. Descriptions state what the instrument provides or records; no view is offered on its content.
Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
A UNESCO standard-setting instrument of the type "Recommendation", adopted at the 41st session of the General Conference in Paris on 23 November 2021, setting out values, principles and policy action areas on the ethics of artificial intelligence.
Council of Europe Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law (CETS No. 225)
A Council of Europe treaty opened for signature at Vilnius on 5 September 2024 whose provisions, in the Treaty Office's words, "aim to ensure that activities within the lifecycle of artificial intelligence systems are fully consistent with human rights, democracy and the rule of law".
Chart of signatures and ratifications of Treaty 225
The Treaty Office's per-State table recording, for each Council of Europe member, non-member and international organisation, the dates of signature, ratification and entry into force of CETS No. 225, together with reservations and declarations.
General Assembly resolution A/RES/78/265, "Seizing the opportunities of safe, secure and trustworthy artificial intelligence systems for sustainable development"
A General Assembly resolution on artificial intelligence recorded as adopted without vote at the 63rd plenary meeting, with an action note of 21 March 2024 (draft A/78/L.49; meeting record A/78/PV.63).
Global Digital Compact (Annex I to the Pact for the Future)
An annex to the Pact for the Future setting out commitments on digital cooperation and the governance of artificial intelligence, including establishing an Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and launching a Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
Independent International Scientific Panel on AI
A UN scientific body which its own site states was established by General Assembly resolution A/RES/79/325, adopted 26 August 2025, to produce evidence-based assessments of the development, opportunities, risks and impacts of artificial intelligence, and which launched a Preliminary Report on 1 July 2026.
Implementation tools and business-and-human-rights guidance
AI Readiness Assessment Methodology (RAM)
An implementation tool of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation which UNESCO describes as enabling countries "to turn the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of AI into action", collecting information across legal, social, economic, educational, scientific and technological dimensions.
Ethical Impact Assessment (EIA)
An implementation tool of the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation which UNESCO describes as a tool for policy makers and other stakeholders to examine whether a specific AI system is in line with the values and principles of the Recommendation.
B-Tech Project
An OHCHR project that publishes papers and guidance on applying the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights to the development and use of digital technologies, including a generative-AI workstream.
EU law and EU regulator guidance
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 is listed once, as the Official Journal text. The Commission's article-by-article presentation pages were dropped as duplicates (see 'dropped').
Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 (Artificial Intelligence Act) — Official Journal text
The Official Journal text of the EU's harmonised rules on artificial intelligence, including Article 5 ("Prohibited AI practices"), Article 10 ("Data and data governance"), Article 27 ("Fundamental rights impact assessment for high-risk AI systems"), Article 50 (transparency obligations for providers and deployers of certain AI systems) and Article 53(1) (obligations of providers of general-purpose AI models, including a copyright policy and a public summary of training content).
Guidelines on prohibited artificial intelligence practices (AI Act Article 5)
Guidelines published by the European Commission on 4 February 2025 setting out its interpretation of the AI practices prohibited by Article 5 of the AI Act, which the page states are non-binding, with authoritative interpretation reserved to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Transparency obligations under Article 50 of the AI Act (Commission Q&A)
A European Commission questions-and-answers page on the Article 50 transparency duties, covering disclosure that a person is interacting with an AI system, machine-readable marking of AI-generated or manipulated output, labelling of deepfakes and of AI-generated text on matters of public interest, and notification of persons exposed to emotion-recognition or biometric-categorisation systems.
Code of Practice on Transparency of AI-Generated Content
A voluntary code of practice published by the European Commission in two sections, addressed to providers of generative AI systems (machine-readable marking and detection) and to deployers (labelling of deepfakes and of AI-generated or manipulated text on matters of public interest), intended to support compliance with Article 50 of the AI Act.
Opinion 28/2024 on certain data protection aspects related to the processing of personal data in the context of AI models
An EDPB opinion issued under Article 64(2) GDPR addressing when an AI model may be regarded as anonymous, reliance on legitimate interest as a legal basis, and the data-protection consequences where a model was developed through unlawful processing of personal data.
Guidelines 05/2022 on the use of facial recognition technology in the area of law enforcement
EDPB guidelines addressed to EU and national lawmakers and to law enforcement authorities on the data-protection conditions applying to the deployment of facial recognition technology, including the need for a legal basis in national law for processing biometric data.
Equality and non-discrimination bodies
Guidance on AI and data protection — "What about fairness, bias and discrimination?"
A section of the ICO's guidance on AI and data protection addressing fairness, bias and discrimination under UK data protection law, with sub-sections on how bias and discrimination relate to fairness, why an AI system might lead to discrimination, technical approaches to mitigating discrimination risk in machine-learning models, and processing special category data to assess and address discrimination.
Artificial intelligence in public services
EHRC guidance for people in public bodies in England, Scotland and Wales who procure, commission, build, adapt, use or oversee AI, covering what artificial intelligence is, how the Public Sector Equality Duty under the Equality Act 2010 applies when a public body uses AI, and a checklist for public bodies in England and for non-devolved and cross-border bodies.
Automatisch benachteiligt — legal opinion on algorithmic decision-making and the AGG
The agency's publication page for a legal opinion (Rechtsgutachten) commissioned by the agency from Prof.
Copyright and training data
Directive (EU) 2019/790 (DSM Directive), Articles 3 and 4 — text and data mining
The official text of the EU Directive on copyright and related rights in the Digital Single Market, whose Article 3 ("Text and data mining for the purposes of scientific research") and Article 4 ("Exception or limitation for text and data mining") set out exceptions for reproductions and extractions made for text and data mining.
Explanatory Notice and Template for the Public Summary of Training Content for general-purpose AI models
A Commission communication providing the template and explanatory notice by which providers of general-purpose AI models are to draw up the public summary of training content required by Article 53(1)(d) of Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, covering matters including data source categories and the provider's copyright policy.
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (report series, Parts 1–3)
The Copyright Office's landing page for its multi-part report on copyright and artificial intelligence, comprising Part 1: Digital Replicas (published 31 July 2024), Part 2: Copyrightability (published 29 January 2025) and Part 3: Generative AI Training (released 9 May 2025).
Report and impact assessment on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
The UK Government's published report and accompanying impact assessment on the use of copyright works in the development of AI systems, issued on 18 March 2026 under sections 135 and 136 of the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025.
Litigation records
Court records only: case name, court, and the procedural position on the date checked. These are live proceedings; nothing here characterises the merits or anticipates an outcome.
Getty Images (US) Inc & Ors v Stability AI Limited, claim no. IL-2023-000007
The official record of a judgment in a claim by Getty Images companies against Stability AI Ltd in the High Court of Justice, Business and Property Courts of England and Wales, Intellectual Property List (ChD), neutral citation [2025] EWHC 2863 (Ch), before Mrs Justice Joanna Smith DBE, dated 4 November 2025.
Thomson Reuters Enterprise Centre GmbH and West Publishing Corp. v. ROSS Intelligence Inc., No. 1:20-cv-613-SB (D. Del.)
The official govinfo copies of written opinions in a District of Delaware case concerning the use of Westlaw headnote material to train a legal-research AI tool, including the memorandum opinion at Document 770 filed 11 February 2025 and the memorandum opinion at Document 804 filed 23 May 2025 (Bibas, Circuit Judge, sitting by designation).
In re: OpenAI, Inc., Copyright Infringement Litigation, MDL No. 3143 — Transfer Order
The Panel's transfer order, Document 85 filed 3 April 2025, centralising actions then pending in the Northern District of California and the Southern District of New York and transferring those outside that district to the Southern District of New York, assigned to the Honorable Sidney H.
National authorities: labelling of AI-generated content and elections
Measures for Labelling AI-Generated and Synthetic Content (人工智能生成合成内容标识办法)
Chinese administrative measures, issued jointly by four authorities and stated on the release page to take effect on 1 September 2025, requiring providers of AI-generated or AI-synthesised content to apply explicit labels visible to users and implicit machine-readable identifiers such as metadata or watermarks.
AI & elections
A page published by Australia's federal electoral commission describing how AI may feature in election communication and setting out the limits of the AEC's own statutory remit over such material.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Election Administration
A resource page collecting the EAC's published materials on AI for state and local election officials, including an AI toolkit, AI case studies, voter-education handout templates, a cybersecurity brief and AI use-case inventories.
Work, children, environment and accessibility
Observatory on AI and Work in the Digital Economy
An ILO hub page that collects the organisation's research, data, legislative tracking and briefs on the world-of-work dimensions of artificial intelligence and the digital economy.
A moment of choice: Harnessing artificial intelligence for decent work — Report of the Director-General (ILC.114/Report I(B))
A report of the ILO Director-General prepared for the 114th Session of the International Labour Conference on artificial intelligence in relation to decent work, published 4 May 2026 and available in several languages.
Generative AI and Jobs: A Refined Global Index of Occupational Exposure (ILO Working Paper 140)
An ILO working paper published 20 May 2025 that updates the ILO's 2023 global index of occupational exposure to generative AI across countries and occupational groups.
AI and work (topic page)
The OECD's topic page assembling its employment-related AI outputs, including its surveys of employers and workers, its material on algorithmic management in the workplace, and links to the OECD Employment Outlook 2025.
Guidance on AI and children, version 3.0
A UNICEF guidance document, version 3.0, published December 2025, which draws on the Convention on the Rights of the Child to set out ten requirements for AI policies and systems affecting children, with an accompanying checklist.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) end-to-end: The Environmental Impact of the Full AI Lifecycle Needs to be Comprehensively Assessed — issue note
A UNEP issue note dated 21 September 2024 setting out the areas UNEP identifies as relevant to the environmental impact of AI across its lifecycle, stating the aim of informing Member States, civil society, the private sector and the public and of encouraging the research community to develop methods for measuring that footprint.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Accessibility Research Symposium 2023
The WAI's report page for an international online research symposium held 10–11 January 2023 on the effects of artificial intelligence on digital accessibility, providing session summaries, transcripts and videos.
How this switchboard is maintained
- Every entry links to the issuing body's own page — a treaty office record, an official journal text, a regulator's own guidance — never to commentary about it.
- Descriptions state what an instrument provides or what a body publishes. They are written so they read the same to someone who supports the instrument and someone who opposes it.
- Litigation entries carry the case name, the court and the procedural position on the date checked, taken from a court record. They do not describe the merits, do not say who is likely to prevail, and are re-checked rather than assumed to have stayed still.
- Where named authorities take differing positions, both are linked and neither is presented as correct.
- Anything that could not be confirmed against a primary source was left out rather than published — including one national instrument whose official text could not be retrieved.
Is the Council of Europe's AI convention in force?
The Council of Europe Treaty Office record for CETS No. 225 shows no entry-into-force date. It lists the condition for entry into force as five ratifications including at least three Council of Europe member States.
The Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law was opened for signature at Vilnius on 5 September 2024. Signature and ratification figures change, so they are not restated here; the Treaty Office publishes a per-State chart that stamps its own status date. Claims circulating in secondary sources that the Convention entered into force do not match the depositary's own record, which is the authority the AI Center follows.
Source: Council of Europe Treaty Office — CETS No. 225 record ↗
How does the AI Center handle ongoing court cases?
It records only what a court record shows — the case name, the court, and the procedural position on the date it was checked — and links the record. It does not describe the merits of a case or suggest how it may be decided.
Litigation over training data is active in several jurisdictions and moves between hearings. A reference work that characterised the merits would be substituting its own view for a court's, and one that predicted outcomes would be forecasting — both of which this site does not do. Where a judgment or order has issued, the entry says what the court did; where a matter is pending, it says so and gives the date that was true.
Cite this directory
1BusinessWorld AI Center, "AI, Ethics, Rights & Society." https://1businessworld.com/ai-center/ai-ethics-rights-and-society/ Version as of July 27, 2026.
The AI Center is informational only. It is provided by 1BusinessWorld strictly for general informational and educational purposes. Nothing in the AI Center constitutes, or should be construed as, legal, regulatory, compliance, technical, engineering, security, investment, financial, or other professional advice, or a recommendation, endorsement, solicitation, or offer regarding any technology, product, model, provider, framework, or course of action. 1BusinessWorld is not a law firm, regulatory authority, standards body, conformity-assessment or certification body, or investment adviser, and nothing in the AI Center creates any advisory, fiduciary, attorney-client, or other professional relationship with 1BusinessWorld. Although the AI Center references official materials published by legislatures, regulators, standards bodies, research organizations, and other named authorities, 1BusinessWorld makes no representation or warranty, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, timeliness, or fitness for any purpose of any content, and, to the fullest extent permitted by law, disclaims all liability for any loss or damage of any kind arising directly or indirectly from the use of, or reliance on, any information presented. Laws, regulations, standards, technical practices, and AI capabilities change frequently and differ by jurisdiction; readers must verify all information against the current official text or source and consult qualified legal, compliance, technical, and other professional advisors before acting. Any decision relating to the development, deployment, procurement, or governance of AI systems is made solely at the reader's own risk. Last reviewed: July 27, 2026.