Some ideas are so inherently stupid you don’t think to take them seriously. Then you realize it’s a government idea and that the government has the power to implement it. So, while still stupid. It’s also very serious.

America, sit down. It’s the UK’s turn to shine.

The UK government is proposing new rules that would let tech firms freely use copyrighted material to train their models unless the creators proactively opt out.

The copyright exemption means that companies like OpenAI (makers of ChatGPT), Google (Gemini) and others can train their models on whatever words, sounds, images they find without asking permission or compensating the artists that created them.

Put simply, it’s an incredible, and incredibly massive, tech giveaway.

As the BBC explains:

Generative AI programmes mine, or learn, from vast amounts of data like text, images, or music online to generate new content which feels like it has been made by a human.

The proposals would give artists or creators a so-called “rights reservation” – the ability to opt out.

But critics of the plan believe it is not possible for an individual writer or artist to notify thousands of different AI service providers that they do not want their content used in that way, or to monitor what has happened to their work across the whole internet.

Over a thousand British musicians banded together to release a protest album against the proposal. The album, Is This What We Want?, features 12 tracks in the 3-5 minute range that record the sounds of empty studios and performance spaces. On one, you might hear someone shuffling about. On another, you might hear a cough or some clatter.

“You can hear my cats moving around,” says Hewitt Jones of the track he contributed to the album. “I have two cats in my studio who bother me all day when I’m working.”

Issues surrounding copyright and artist control over their creations is peaking in the UK as the government tries to lure tech firms to the country.

Last fall, 37,000 creative professionals signed a statement organized by the British composer Ed Newton-Rex saying that the unlicensed use of creative work for AI model training is a “major, unjust” threat to creators’ livelihoods.

“The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them,” Newton-Rex told The Associated Press.

A study released last December by the International Confederation of Societies of Authors and Composers concludes that music industry workers stand to lose $3.7 billion to AI companies by 2028.

Or, as the study notes:

In an unchanged regulatory framework, creators will actually suffer losses on two fronts: the loss of revenues due to the unauthorised use of their works by Gen AI models without remuneration; and replacement of their traditional revenue streams due to the substitution effect of AI-generated outputs, competing against human-made works.

The UK government proposal seems intent on taking care of the first part in one fell swoop. In a letter to the Times of London, Elton John, Paul McCartney, Tom Stoppard and Kazuo Ishiguro among other notables write that the copyright exemption is “a wholesale giveaway of rights and income from the UK’s creative sectors to Big Tech.”

Meantime, The BBC flags a statement from a spokesman for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. The current copyright regime is “holding back” creatives and the tech companies from “realizing their full potential. That’s why we have been 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.” (Emphasis ours)

Protect the interests? Of tech companies? To pillage the works of the country’s creatives? It beggars belief.

AI “music” is already on streaming services. In 2023, Spotify removed tens of thousands of songs uploaded to it by AI music generator Boomy. The issue wasn’t the AI songs. It was that bots artificially boosted their play count.

The Spotify’s and Boomy’s of the world want legitimate AI songs trained on real world artists. If artists want to participate, so be it. It’s their work, after all. Compensate them how they want to be compensated. Grimes, for example, is fully onboard with fans making new music with an AI-generated version of her voice.

In the meantime, protect the musicians and give Is This What We Want? a listen.

Artists involved include Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Yusuf Stevens, Billy Ocean, The Clash, Mystery Jets, Tori Amos, and Hans Zimmer and Damon Albarn, along with contemporary classical composers Max Richter and Thomas Hewitt Jones among many, many others.