DAMIAN COLLINS: No 10 must block AI giants attempting to steal our artists' work
The creative industries are one of the UK’s greatest assets: drivers of innovation and growth, as well as a source of cultural power and wellbeing.
But they only prosper thanks to copyright, a law that dictates music cannot be copied, novels plagiarised or movies pirated.
At the beginning of last month, however, Google published a policy paper entitled: Unlocking The UK’s AI Potential.
What’s not to like?, you might ask. Artificial intelligence has the potential to revolutionise our economy and we don’t want to be left behind as the rest of the world embraces its benefits.
But buried in Google’s report is a call for a ‘text and data mining’ (TDM) exception to copyright.
At the beginning of last month Google published a policy paper entitled: Unlocking The UK’s AI Potential
Actress Julianne Moore was among those who signed a statement attacking the move as ‘an unjust threat’ to their livelihoods
This TDM exception would allow Google to scrape the entire history of human creativity from the internet without permission and without payment.
Naturally, the world’s artists are up in arms. This week, as reported in the Mail, 13,500 creatives including Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus, actress Julianne Moore and writer Sir Kazuo Ishiguro signed a statement attacking the move as ‘an unjust threat’ to their livelihoods.
What Google calls ‘innovation’ is, in fact, copyright infringement on an unprecedented scale. That’s why the tech giant is demanding a new law to exempt it from copyright.
Basically, the world’s fourth largest company, with a valuation of more than $2 trillion, wants a free pass to be a global pirate. It would like the Government to confiscate work that belongs to creators and rights holders so that it and other tech firms can commercialise new products and services.
Last week, Feryal Clark – the new AI and digital government minister – was reported as saying that a new law may be needed to end the AI copyright dispute. Is she really thinking of introducing a TDM exception? If so, as we have seen, she can expect spirited resistance.
In 2022, the Intellectual Property Office proposed just such a move but was quickly forced to think again after a backlash from the creative community.
Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus also signed the statement along with 13,500 other creatives
In the aftermath of that sorry episode, the culture, media and sport select committee looked in depth at the relationship between AI and copyright. It concluded that, far from siding with Silicon Valley, the Government should strengthen the hand of creators and rights holders to ensure that human creativity thrives into the AI era. That meant rejecting any form of TDM exception.
The most effective route through this is simple: require tech companies to be transparent about the ‘data’ they are using to train their AI systems, so that the creative industries and tech companies can get round a table and discuss commercial terms.
The truth is that – far from being a ‘barrier to innovation’ – copyright is a vital tool in nurturing it.
- Damian Collins was chairman of the digital, culture, media and sport committee from 2016 to 2019.
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