Open letter

Objection to the Government's Proposed Copyright Exemption for Generative AI Training

Wednesday 12th February 2025:

We are some among the 2.4 million working in the UK creative industries. We are staring in astonishment at the sight of our own government making plans to do away with significant areas of our intellectual property rights, readying to hastily wrap our live’s work in attractive paper as a welcome gift to automated competitors.

Matt Clifford, venture capitalist turned government advisor, made the wish list of generative AI developers front and centre of the soon-to-be implemented AI Opportunity Action Plan. Clause 24 of the plan calls on the government to put an end to copyright protection as we know it and introduce an exception that would make our country a data-mining paradise for the ever more voracious generative AI industries.

If the plan is implemented as it is, it will be legal for AI companies to scrape everything we upload online, without licence or permission. They will be allowed to profit from the output of commercial AI products that would be trained, for free, on our copyrighted work. Their mission is to replace our work with their output. The livelihood of workers will become their profit.

The mechanism that is meant to balance the rights of creators against those of AI developers is an ‘opt-out’ option, the same mechanism that the EU tried, but failed, to implement. Opt-outs are universally considered unfair and unworkable by anyone who has looked into the matter objectively, including many in parliament. Moreover the burden of reserving the rights would fall on us, the creators, reversing the principle of automatic protection that underpins UK copyright law.

In an attempt to justify this indefensible transfer of value — from our industry, who produces it, to the one that wants to extract it — those who push for the reform have fabricated a rhetoric of ‘uncertainty in the law.’ This, regrettably, has been amplified through the media. MP Pete Wishart, voicing what we all know, recently said that the notion of current UK law being uncertain is just nonsense, adding that nobody actually believes it, that even AI companies wouldn’t say that there is any question surrounding that idea. Indeed the only issue that urgently needs to be remedied with new legislation is transparency: if AI companies can refuse to disclose the content of their datasets, any talk of fairness is farcical.

We stand beside our government in their effort to make our economy thrive and the United Kingdom a successful and welcome home for trailblazers. The creative industries are already a successful source of wealth for the nation, accounting for more than 5% of GDP and contributing 124 billion pounds of value to the economy. But they do more than that: they’re a source of pride, joy and wellbeing for the people of this country and the crown jewel of British soft power.

Subjecting our creative industries to the desires of Big Tech will boost neither growth nor innovation: unregulated tech is inherently extractive in nature and we run the risk of seeing it bleed our industries of the energy that comes from its grassroots in a reckless and unsustainable ‘slush-and-burn’ approach that sacrifices quality and our values for the sake of a quick buck.

Large language models are sensational in their capacity to imitate thought and human expression, but they don’t think, they can’t feel and they can’t question norms. Creativity remains, unquestionably, a human trait. Culture is a human artefact, our heritage was created collectively by the people and it should remain under their care.

The government has left a little window of time open for us to give our views: their public consultation on copyright and artificial Intelligence runs until the 25th of February. This is our last chance to express with urgency our concern and disagreement for the approach that has been proposed.

We are demanding transparency and a strong copyright regime that safeguards the livelihood of freelance workers and the vitality of human creativity.

Written by Simona Ciraolo, 11 Feb 2025.

Initiating Signatories: Momoko Abe, Ged Adamson, Simona Ciraolo, Chris Haughton, Rachel Hill, CEO, Association of Illustrators, Anna Ganley, CEO, Society of Authors