Jake Elwes’ Terms & Conditions Opera: a Legalese Libretto (2024–2025) turns the fine print of corporate AI platforms into an absurdist operatic score. Elwes constructed a process whereby OpenAI (famous for ChatGPT) and Suno (a music creation AI) could be fed their own usage policies and terms of service. In this self-referential loop the systems absurdly reinterpret the legal frameworks that govern them, producing a kaleidoscopic blend of musical genres. For Elwes, the true content of corporate AI lies not in its generated output – often imitative and derivative – but in the policies, copyrights, and terms that shape its use and demand real human labour and political engagement. By “feeding an AI on itself” the work renders opaque legal jargon strangely legible and even
laughable, highlighting the ethical, legal, and creative tensions at the heart of our relationship with machine generated culture. Terms & Conditions Opera connects directly to the November 2024 manifesto and collective action Elwes played a central role in, under the title ‘Art in the Cage of Digital Reproduction’, in which artists withdrew their labour from OpenAI’s then unreleased video generation model, Sora.