More than a thousand British artists have decided to use silence to make noise in front of the threat of artificial intelligence (AI). Any user of the Spotify music platform, among other access roads, can already access a strange album, with twelve themes, who have produced and support musicians such as Kate Bush, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox or Jamiroquai. Your title: Is This What We Want? (Is this what we want?). Twelve songs in which only silence is heard. And if one pays attention, the domestic noises that flood a world without music, such as the buzz of a heating system or the distant steps of someone who wads through a corridor.
The artistic community of the United Kingdom has rebelled against the Law of Use and Access of Data prepared by the Keir Starmer government, which facilitates the great technological giants the possibility of raffling intellectual property rights to use a whole flow of works in Training of new generative AI models.
Each of the twelve songs of the album, in the order in which they are presented, is entitled a single word. Read one after another, they express the crude denunciation of the artists before a future threatened by new technologies: The/ British/ Government / Must/ Not/ Legalise/ Music/ Theft/ To/ Benefit/ AI / Companies (The/ British/ not/ no/ must/ legalize/ the robbery/ of music/ in/ benefit/ of the companies/ of AI).
Musicians, filmmakers or writers with reputation, muscle and influence such as Paul McCartney, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ed Sheeran, Sting, Dua Lipa, or playwright Tom Stoppard have joined the battle against the new law. Those who have not decided to participate in the silent protest album have incorporated their signature into a letter sent to the newspaper The Times, en the one they denounce a proposal “that represents a delivery without conditions and absolute of the rights and income of the creative sectors of the United Kingdom to large technology companies.”
The Starmer’s government, desperate to insufflate economic growth to a country that does not end in recent months, wants the United Kingdom to be the ally and entrance door to Europe from the large US companies that generate today the main models of intelligence Artificial, and that need huge amounts of data and information to train their generative AI systems.
The new bill weakens the enormous protection of intellectual property that the British environment has always granted, and that made it the most comfortable and safe ecosystem for thousands of artists. The government’s proposal establishes an exception to the rule in terms of generative AI systems training, and exempts technological companies that intend to use the existing artistic material to warn their authors. Contrary to the usual, it is these who must discover on their own if their work is being used and claim that it is not so.
The battle against the law has been led by the filmmaker and documentary filmmaker Beeban Kidron (Lady Kidron), director among many other films of the second installment of the saga of Bridget Jones. He is a member Independent, without assignment to any party, of the House of Lores, and thanks to its amendments it has been possible to stop, for the moment, the parliamentary process of the new text. In the first vote that took place in the second camera (which, as with the Spanish Senate, can stop a text but not to stop it definitively), a majority of 145 lords compared to 126 supported the requirement that technological ones were forced to reveal to reveal The identity of the artists whose work went to use, as well as the purpose of their essays.
“AI can play an important role in our economy, as can perform foreign companies. There is a clear growth opportunity if we combine the arrival of AI with the creative industry. But the way to achieve this cannot be this forced marriage, in terms of slavery, ”said Kidron.
The artists who support their battle share that most cautious tone than belligerent. In the text sent to The Times They point out that the creative industry contributes every year with more than 150,000 million euros to the British economy, and gives work every year to 2.4 million people. “They generate tourism, raise our position in the world and contribute joy and spirit of community to our citizens, while building a culture in which everyone is reflected,” they say in the letter.
All signatories admit their desire to be part of the “AI revolution”, as they did in the past with other technologies, but demand the government to protect intellectual property. “There is no economic or moral argument to steal our copyright,” they finish.