UK’s Creative Industries Say Transparency Is Needed To Protect Jobs From AI
5 min read
Leaders in the UK’s creative industries have told PoliticsHome that transparency around the use of copyrighted material is key to protecting jobs and incomes against an increased proliferation of AI-generated artwork.
In July, an AI-generated band called The Velvet Sundown amassed over one million streams on Spotify, before a statement was released admitting that their music, images and backstory were created by AI. It was not clear what music the album’s bands were trained on.
Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, former CEO of UK Music and special adviser at Downing Street, told PoliticsHome: “The law is clear: for commercial purposes, you need a license in order to train a model on someone else’s intellectual property.
“The difficulty in enforcing this is knowing when someone’s content has actually been used to train AI. That’s why it’s so critical that the government focuses on transparency - we need to know when an AI has used someone’s copyrighted data, as well as knowing when content is AI-generated at the output level.
“Transparency is critical for the licensing regime to operate effectively. Because without transparency, you have no idea if someone has trained on your content without a license - and it’s therefore impossible to properly enforce the law.”
PoliticsHome understands that the government has begun chairing roundtable discussions with both the AI sector and creative industry, focusing on transparency and standards as a key issue.
According to a survey from the Association of Photographers in February, 58 per cent of its members have lost work to generative AI services, totalling an average of £14,400 per member. These losses illustrate the industry's concern for the issue now, with an overwhelming number of members – over 90 per cent – calling for greater transparency and replacement of the opt-out system, saying it would “not be feasible to ‘opt-out’ for all their works from all locations”.
Tim Flach, president of the Association of Photographers, said: “Transparency on the use of our works at the point of ingestion is key and where the value to our creative works lies. What remains critical is that creators retain control over the use of their works, as their intellectual property right, or copyright.
“Any proposed ‘way forward’ must include creators in government discussions, and must be a ‘voluntary’ opt-in process that enables individual creators, such as myself, to retain full control of our rights. As far as what this might look like, the devil will definitely be in the details.”
Crossbench peer Baroness Kidron proposed an amendment to the Data Bill before it was passed as an Act, suggesting that the government should draft legislation focusing on the matter of transparency. It was ultimately blocked in the Commons.
She told PoliticsHome: “During the passage of the Data Bill, the government made many promises to the creative industries, asking them to ‘trust them’. The first thing they must do is show us how copyright is to be protected by transparency and how they are going to stop the widespread theft of copyright material.
“Once that is established, any number of creative ways of sharing material are possible. The problem with this whole debate is that the government is inserting itself between AI companies and creators instead of protecting copyright and leaving business and artists to make their own creative partnership decisions.”
Caroline Dinenage, chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, said reforming the licensing system for the creative industry is “the only way forward” in its battle with AI. The Conservative MP for Gosport first raised the issue with the Prime Minister at the Liaison Committee in December last year. She accused the government of being “prepared to sacrifice” the sector, which is worth approximately £136bn to the UK economy.
She told PoliticsHome: “It’s a huge sector and they're just not taking into consideration how much the creative industries are worth compared to an AI sector, which is largely US-owned global tech giants, and they seem to think that they can attract them to the UK and that will somehow make up for the shortfall.”
Dinenage added: “I feel that there's been a real arrogance shown by the government – particularly Peter Kyle – over this, and that he really didn't want to engage with the creative industries themselves. He felt that his job was just to do the science and tech aspect of this, and leave it to Lisa Nandy to engage with the creative industries.”
She takes an even gloomier view of the overall situation, saying that “the horse has bolted” on the issue of AI companies harvesting creatives’ data from online, adding that “the only way forward really is some form of licensing which actually kicks in at the point of output rather than the point of input”.
“I think the only way forward, really, is some form of licensing which actually kicks in at the point of output rather than the point of input, because they've already inhaled so much so many people's creative content. So the only way to really deal with it now is to make it something that's implementable at the point of output.”
However, Njoku-Goodwin said the government “should be very careful about making changes” to licensing, saying that it could “potentially destabilise the regime”. Flach agreed: “With respect to the chair of the Culture Media and Sport Committee, we fully agree on the need for licensing, but not necessarily on the point of output.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology said: “We are firmly committed to considering a range of options that help achieve our objectives.
“No decisions have been taken, but our focus will always be on enhancing the ability of rights holders to be compensated and paid fairly, while enabling access to high-quality material to train leading AI models in the UK.”
