The sound of silence.
That’s how a group of more than 1,000 musicians including Kate Bush and Annie Lennox are making noise in objection to proposed changes to artificial intelligence (AI) laws in the UK that would strip their creative control. Their album “Is This What We Want?” contains a dozen recordings of empty studios and performance spaces.
Paul McCartney and Elton John are among rock royalty who have spoken out against a plan that would allow tech companies to use copyrighted material to help train AI models unless content creators explicitly opt out.
But the opt-out proposal has been met with scorn from opponents who say there is no evidence of a “water-tight” rights reservation process anywhere.
“You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off,” McCartney recently told the BBC. “The truth is, the money’s going somewhere. When it gets on the streaming platforms, somebody is getting it, and it should be the person who created it. It shouldn’t be some tech giant somewhere.”
A statement signed by 48,000 artists, including Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus, further warned of a “major, unjust threat” to creative professionals’ livelihoods.
In a statement, the British government said it was “consulting on a new approach that protects the interests of both AI developers and right holders and delivers a solution which allows both to thrive.” It added that “no decisions have been taken.”
The tempered statement comes after the Labour Party government in December announced a consultation into how copyright law can “enable creators and right holders to exercise control over, and seek remuneration for, the use of their works for AI training” while also ensuring “AI developers have easy access to a broad range of high-quality creative content.” The government’s preferred option is to let AI companies train the models on copyrighted work by giving them an exception for “text and data mining.”
The consultation, which closed Tuesday, also proposes measures that require transparency from AI developers on what content they have used to train their models.
Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords and a film-maker, told the Guardian the country’s copyright law doesn’t need changing because it already prohibits one’s work being used without their permission.
