British stars including author Sir Ian Rankin and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke are among thousands of international artists who have signed a statement against the unlicensed use of their work by artificial intelligence companies.
The statement, which is also backed by ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus, actor Kevin Bacon, and Nobel Prize-winning novelist Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, claims the use of their intellectual property is a breach of copyright and a ‘major threat’ to their livelihoods.
It comes at a time when members of the creative industries are increasingly concerned about tech firms using their work to train AI models such as ChatGPT.
The letter states: ‘The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works and must not be permitted.’
Composer Ed Newton-Rex, who organised the statement, told The Guardian people from the music, literature, film, theatre and television industries were ‘very worried’.
British stars including author Sir Ian Rankin (pictured) are among thousands of international artists who have signed a statement against the unlicensed use of their work by artificial intelligence companies
The statement, which is also backed by Radiohead singer Thom Yorke (pictured) claims the use of their intellectual property is a breach of copyright
ABBA’s Bjorn Ulvaeus has also signed the statement
‘There are three key resources that generative AI companies need to build AI models: people, compute and data,’ he said.
‘They spend vast sums on the first two — sometimes a million dollars per engineer and up to a billion dollars per model. But they expect the third — training data — for free.’
Mr Newton-Rex resigned as head of audio at tech firm Stability AI last year over its claim that accessing copyrighted material to train AI models was ‘fair use’, a US legal term.
He added: ‘When AI companies call this “training data”, they dehumanise it. What we’re talking about is people’s work — their writing, their art, their music.’
The UK government has been considering an ‘opt-out’ proposal under which AI firms could gather content from artists and publishers, according to reports.
Kevin Bacon also signed the statement, as he too believes that the use of intellectual property is a ‘major threat’ to the livelihoods of artists
Google has called for rules to be relaxed on so-called text and data mining, where copyrighted work can be used for non-commercial purposes including academic research.
But Mr Newton-Rex said it was unfair as ‘even the most well-run opt-out schemes get missed by most people who have the chance to opt-out’.
Other signatories of the letter include the European Writers’ Council, the American Federation of Musicians, US actors union SAG-AFTRA and Universal Music Group.
For congressman John Grisham and Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin are among authors in the US suing OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, for breach of copyright.
Record labels such as Universal, Sony Music and Warner Records are also taking action against AI music creators Suno and Udio.
Sophie Jones, British Phonographic Industry (BPI) chief strategy officer, said: ‘While the British music industry is already embracing AI’s many positive use-cases, it is also our firm view that a broad copyright exception for text and data mining by AI firms would be hugely damaging to the UK’s creative industries.
‘Copyright serves to safeguard the value of human creativity, while also driving value in the wider music and creative industries. If the UK is to remain a global creative powerhouse in an increasingly competitive world, the Government must ensure that it is respected and enforced.
‘This means requiring AI firms to seek authorisation before taking copyrighted content, coupled with transparency obligations, including record keeping, to enable a healthy and fair market to flourish.’
