Made in Britain – stolen by generative AI

Britain’s creative sectors are the envy of the world – and a major contributor to this nation’s global soft power over the past century.

Music, film, TV, books, drama, audio, photography, visual art, gaming and, yes, high-quality journalism have all grown and flourished in the UK.

This is no accident. It’s the result of UK copyright laws, which have helped to attract and nurture creative talent, confident that their work has lasting value.

Together our creative industries contribute more than £125bn a year to the British economy.

These are jobs and (taxable) revenue based in the UK, not overseas.

Now the Government is endangering this, in its rush to accommodate the big tech firms who are pioneering generative AI.

This particular artificial intelligence revolution holds great promise. Yet it does not need to be built on stealing others’ content.

Labour intends to change the UK’s gold standard copyright laws to make it easier for AI companies to use British creative content without payment or permission.

That’s already illegal in the UK. The Government disingenuously claims there is “uncertainty” in British copyright law, when this is evidently not the case.

In fact the law is clear. Text and data mining – the scraping of content used to train and feed generative AI models – is unlawful for commercial purposes without a licence.

Some of these tech firms have mind-boggling profit margins. Asking them to take a little less need not hinder tech investment. Licensing is a moral and legal obligation.

Without protection, the UK creative industries cannot continue to thrive. What incentive is there to create high-quality content if it can simply be scraped, stolen and regurgitated by a Californian tech giant?

The Government has failed to properly consider the impact on Britain’s economy.

Today, in an unprecedented move, every UK national newspaper and website joins together in a stand against this theft.

We are joined by hundreds of regional and local titles, in a “takeover” of our front pages and website homepages.

Our demand? Simply that the Government enforces the law – the existing copyright law, with meaningful transparency.

Britain has the second largest creative industry globally, alongside the third biggest AI sector.

A mutually beneficial partnership is possible. Protecting copyright will spur growth and provide a sustainable basis for creatives and AI firms to exist together.

Copyrighted content is the essential fuel on which AI models run. Even once they have been trained, generative-AI models still need access to recent, accurate content to ensure they create timely and factually correct output – instead of hallucinations or dud answers, which are wrong or outdated.

The outcry goes far beyond journalism and includes musicians, the film industry, writers, artists and book publishers.

In the music industry – which has been vocal, and which has previously fought the challenges of Napster and Spotify – opponents of this change to copyright law include Elton John, Kate Bush, Paul McCartney, Thom Yorke and Simon Cowell, as well as the composers Sir John Rutter and Max Richter.

Among UK news media, the threat unites The i Paper and Financial Times, The Guardian and Daily Star, among hundreds of other titles.

These are unlikely alliances, showing the scale of the threat.

Cheeringly, there is something you can do. The proposed change to the UK’s copyright law has reached a very delicate stage. Your voice can be influential among MPs, who will soon debate the plan and vote on it.

If any of this troubles you, and if you have 30 seconds – it really does take that little time – then you can write to your MP at this link: creativerightsinai.eaction.org.uk/MP.

Thank you for your time.