Title
From Neural Data to Creative Autonomy: Bridging AI Ethics and Neuroethics in the Creative Industries
Abstract
Creative professionals—musicians, filmmakers, designers—are frontline adopters of AI technologies that directly interact with cognitive processes: generative AI, voice synthesis, neural networks for creativity. Yet the ethical frameworks developed for neurotechnologies (mental privacy, cognitive liberty, brain data protection) remain disconnected from AI practice in the creative industries, creating a critical gap between neuroethical theory and creative-AI reality.
This presentation bridges that gap through our human rights-based framework for AI education—Identity Before Tools—developed through three years of teaching AI ethics to creative professionals at a film school, a music institution, and a youth social care setting in Berlin and Potsdam. The framework is grounded in the Mirror Hypothesis: our proposal that human-AI interaction is bidirectional, shaping not only AI outputs but the cognitive, emotional, and relational capacities of the humans who engage with these systems.
We identify three convergence points where neurotechnology ethics and creative AI ethics overlap: (1) Cognitive autonomy vs. algorithmic optimization—the right to create inefficiently, imperfectly, humanly; (2) Mental privacy and data dignity—protecting creative process data from extractive surveillance models; (3) Self-determination in human-AI collaboration—preserving agency in co-creative systems that learn from neural patterns.
Through concrete examples from our workshops, we present a practical methodology: rather than starting with tools, we begin with self-knowledge (“Who are you? What matters?”), then map ethical frameworks to individual creative practice. We also present an unexpected theoretical bridge: sound healing practice—the deliberate use of resonance, silence, and vibration to affect human states—as a model for understanding how non-verbal, non-transactional interaction with an entity shapes the interacting human. The implications for neuroethics and AI governance are discussed.
Our work is grounded in a Working Paper series (the first two papers published open access on Zenodo, further papers in development) and has been accepted at the SAFER Workshop at IJCAI-ECAI 2026 (Bremen, August 2026) and as a civil society submission to the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance (Geneva, July 2026). The Creative Humanity AI Hub (Hub Corsica, planned launch 2027) will scale this model across EU creative industries.
About Marco & Kordula
Marco Nieschka is an AI Educator, Film & VFX Producer, and electronic musician (A.K.A. Marouko). He teaches AI ethics to creative professionals at a film school and a music institution in Berlin and Potsdam, and conducts workshops in social care settings. He holds multiple AI ethics certifications (University of Helsinki, Danish Institute for Human Rights, UNESCO/UNITAR, Kaggle/Google) and is a member of SACEM, ADAMI, SCPP, the Content Authenticity Initiative, and the Hollywood Professional Association. His position paper “Identity Before Tools” was accepted (with minor revisions) at the SAFER Workshop, IJCAI-ECAI 2026.
Kordula Marisa Hildebrandt (artist name: Stella Marisa) is a Film Producer/Director with credits including Netflix, Arte, and Berlinale. She is a Sound & Somatic Practitioner, certified in Sound Healing, Yoga, Reiki, and Breathwork, as well as a mentor at Deutscher Kulturrat and jury member at Hessische Filmförderung. She holds identical AI ethics certifications as Marco.
Together they are co-founders of the Creative Humanity AI Hub—an initiative of HILDEBRANDT FILM GmbH (CEO: Kordula Marisa Hildebrandt) at the intersection of AI ethics research, neuroethics, and human-centred education in the creative industries. Their Working Papers are published open access on Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.20560307 and 10.5281/zenodo.20560840).