Ghana Must Legally Protect Cultural Assets From AI, Says Rocky Dawuni
Reggae musician Rocky Dawuni is calling on Ghana's government to create a legal framework that recognizes the country's cultural heritage as national property, protecting it from use by AI companies without compensation or credit.
Speaking on TV3's Showbiz 360 on March 20, Dawuni warned that AI models are scraping global data and absorbing cultural concepts without crediting or compensating the communities they come from. "Artificial Intelligence is extracting information from every corner-taking cultural concepts along with it," he said.
Registration and Ownership Trails
Dawuni proposed registering all cultural assets to establish clear ownership records. This would allow Ghana to invoke legal protections if AI companies or foreign entities later claim these concepts as their own.
He singled out Adinkra symbols as a priority. These traditional motifs are used globally without permission, and without patent protection, Ghana risks losing them to foreign creators over time.
"Some people have been replicating our Adinkra symbols in their creative concepts, and if we don't patent these traditional motifs as our intellectual property, over the years, we risk losing them to foreigners entirely," he said.
The Broader Issue
Dawuni framed the problem as a form of digital appropriation. Without institutional safeguards, Ghana's intangible cultural heritage becomes freely available for extraction and reuse by foreign entities.
For government officials tasked with cultural policy or intellectual property protection, this raises a practical question: how should Ghana's legal system handle cultural assets in an era when AI systems can replicate and distribute them globally at scale?
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