HDRI President Joins UNESCO International Congress on Creativity and Cultural Diversity in the Age of AI
Paris, 27 October 2026
Today, Gurgen Petrosyan, President of the Human Development Research Initiative (HDRI), took part in UNESCO’s International Congress “Promoting Human Creativity and the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in the Digital Environment,” held at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris.
Organised under the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the congress brought together artists, international experts, and representatives of international organisations, the private sector and civil society. They met to discuss how artificial intelligence is reshaping creative work, and what UNESCO’s role should be in protecting cultural diversity, supporting artists and cultural professionals, and guiding the cultural and creative industries through this transition.
The day opened with remarks from Nayef Al-Fayez, UNESCO Assistant Director-General for Culture, and keynote addresses from UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador Jean Michel Jarre and Ángeles González-Sinde of CISAC. Three panels followed. The first examined the line between human creation and synthetic production. The second looked at how AI systems can be built to respect rights and cultural diversity. The third focused on keeping diverse cultural content discoverable when algorithms increasingly decide what people see and hear. Speakers included UN Special Rapporteur on cultural rights Alexandra Xanthaki, as well as voices from Nigeria, Korea, Türkiye, Morocco, Senegal and Argentina, alongside representatives of Microsoft, Universal Music Group, IFPI and Ubisoft.
For HDRI, these questions are close to our daily work. Through our programmes on digital rights, youth participation and human-centred technology policy, we see how much young people’s access to culture, information and creative opportunity now depends on the design of digital systems. The congress was a valuable chance to hear how artists, rights holders, platforms and policymakers are approaching these challenges, and to bring a youth and civil society perspective into that conversation.
““Artificial intelligence is changing how culture is created, shared and discovered, and young people will live with these changes longer than anyone. Today’s discussions at UNESCO showed a real commitment to protecting human creativity and the diversity of cultural expressions. At HDRI, we will keep working to make sure young voices are heard in the decisions that will shape culture in the digital age,” said Gurgen Petrosyan, President of HDRI.
The discussions will directly feed into HDRI’s upcoming online youth policy hackathon, Beyond the Algorithm, taking place tomorrow, 28 October, where young participants will draft their own proposals for human-centred tech policy.
HDRI thanks UNESCO for organising this important dialogue and looks forward to contributing to the next steps of its work on culture in the digital environment.
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