The government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan offers a dynamic and exciting vision of how the UK can become a global leader by embracing and developing the potentially world changing power of Artificial Intelligence. It is an inspired and inspiring document, making it easy to see why the government is minded to implement every one of its 50 proposals.
However, whilst applauding much of what the Plan proposes, as a professional trade organisation representing the interests of music copyright owners, PCAM, the Society for Producers & Composers of Applied Music, feels compelled to express its dismay at Proposal 24:
“Reform the UK text and data mining regime so that it is at least as competitive as the EU. The current uncertainty around intellectual property (IP) is hindering innovation and undermining our broader ambitions for AI, as well as the growth of our creative industries.”
The myth that there is some sort of “uncertainty” surrounding the protection of intellectual property as enshrined in the Copyright Laws and that this “uncertainty” is somehow “hindering innovation” is one that has been propagated by those whose mission is to erode and undermine copyright for their own financial benefit.
Much to our consternation, this myth seems to have been seized upon by politicians and government departments, none of whom has offered any example as to how such claimed “uncertainty” manifests itself, as an apparent precursor to an intention to change (i.e. weaken) Copyright Law in favour of generative AI developers and at a potentially existential cost to many of those working in the creative industries.
According to the House of Lords Library, the creative industries generated £126 billion for the UK economy in 2022, employing 2.4 million people and growing by a factor of more than 1.5 faster than the overall economy. Yet many of those working in these industries are freelance or self-employed and rely on the economic contribution that their copyright works generate in order to make their livelihoods sustainable.
The Plan makes reference to the EU, where hasty legislation has led to a widely acknowledged inadequate and unworkable “opt-out” option for rights owners. As AI expert Ed Newton-Rex has stated:
“… opt-out schemes for generative AI training are hugely unfair to creators and they don’t work: you can’t actually use them successfully to opt out.”
To offer the EU legislative model as an example for proposed changes to UK Copyright Law is disingenuous to the point of being knowingly misleading.
PCAM therefore calls upon the government to:
- Protect and uphold existing copyright laws.
- Introduce meaningful and enforceable transparency obligations on generative AI developers.
- Create a legal and cultural environment for AI that supports, rather than undermines, the UK’s world leading creative industries.
As Baroness Kidron stated in the recent House of Lords debate:
“There is a role in our economy for AI… and there is an opportunity of growth in the combination of AI and creative industries. But this forced marriage, on slave terms, is not it.”
— Chris Smith & Simon Surtees