Campaigners for the protection of the rights of creatives have criticised a UK government proposal to let artificial intelligence companies train their algorithms on their works under a new copyright exemption.
Book publishers said the proposal put out for consultation on Tuesday was “entirely untested and unevidenced” while Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer campaigning to protect artists’ and creatives’ rights, said she was “very disappointed”.
Under the proposals, tech companies will be allowed to freely use copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence models unless creative professionals and companies opt out of the process.
The changes are seeking to resolve a standoff between AI firms and creatives. Sir Paul McCartney has warned the technology “could just take over” without new laws while the government has warned “legal uncertainty is undermining investment in and adoption of AI technology.”
On Tuesday, News media organisations said that such a system would allow generative AI firms to “shirk their responsibilities”. Kidron said: “The government is consulting on giving away the creativity and livelihoods of the UK creative sector which is worth £126bn a year”.
Tech UK, which represents tech companies, welcomed the consultation, which proposes an exception to UK laws preventing the use of someone’s work without permission – that will allow companies such as Google and the ChatGPT developer OpenAI to train their models on copyrighted content.
However, it will also allow writers, artists and composers to “reserve their rights”, which involves declaring that they do not want their work to be used in an AI training process . The government said there needed to be greater transparency from AI developers about the material they use to train models, how they acquire it, and about the content subsequently generated and it said it could legislate around this.
Chris Bryant MP, the data protection minister, said the proposal was a “win win” for two sides that have been at loggerheads over a new copyright regime.
“This is about giving greater control in a difficult and complex set of circumstances to creators and rights holders, and we intend it to lead to more licensing of content, which is potentially a new revenue stream for creators,” he said.
Campaigners for creatives fear a mechanism to reserve, license and be paid for the use of their work in AI training, would probably only benefit the largest rights holders leaving small and medium-scale creators exposed.
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There's been plenty of differences between Labour and the Tories so far, but anybody who thought everything was going to change or that on the 4th of July we were suddenly going to turn into a utopia were setting themselves up for disappointment.
The Tories certainly weren't going to make minimum wage more fair, improve workers rights, increase public sector pay, weren't going to go against NIMBYs, weren't going to abolish the tax loopholes the wealthy abuse by buying farmland, weren't going to spend more on education, weren't going to create a nationalised energy company, weren't going to pass the assisted dying bill, weren't going to scrap right to buy, etc.
They're pretty different from the Tories, even if people do point to one of the few things they have in common and say "OmG bOtH SiDeS aRe ThE sAMe"
I've had a number of misgivings with them so far, but I'm not sure how you could look at them so far and say they're the same as the Tories.
No I was just under the impression that the labour would, at least on the surface be more progressive, from my admittedly limited knowledge, they sold the royal mail, for some reason, and they are banning puberty blockers, so some reason. These two things that they didn't have to do, that will only make things worse. I won't fault them for the state of the NHS, that is 15 years of Torrie miss management.
They didn't sell Royal Mail, the Tory/Lib-Dem coalition sold Royal Mail – although it was the Lib Dems that pushed for it hardest.
Puberty blockers being banned in future pending a study, sure, I agree. Although it should be noted a number of countries did that, after a study claimed they may not be as harmless for long-term use as we previously thought. Personally I think the risk is worth taking considering the seriousness of gender dysphoria, but I'm not a healthcare professional so I'm not the best person to ask.
Regardless, taking a similar stance as the Conservatives on that one issue (out of the several dozen that have been looked at by Parliament so far) doesn't mean they are the same.