Elton John, Paul McCartney Join UK Campaign to End AI Firms’ Copyright Theft of 2.4M Creatives

• Elton John and Paul McCartney have joined calls for big tech firms to follow copyright law when training AI.
• Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, has proposed plans requiring big tech firms to adhere to copyright law when training AI.
• The plans respond to the government’s recently unveiled intentions to allow tech firms to ignore traditional copyright laws.

An alliance of almost 60 organizations from the UK entertainment industry, including Elton John and Paul McCartney, has supported plans to call for big tech firms to follow copyright law when training AI.

The move is in response to the government’s recently announced intentions to allow AI developers to ignore traditional copyright laws in Britain.

Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, has proposed a list of amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, which would require big tech firms to adhere to the law when scraping for AI.

AI Developers Can Ignore Copyright Law

Last month, the government unveiled plans to allow big tech firms to ignore traditional copyright laws when training AI systems.

The plans would force creative organizations, such as music publishers, to opt out if they want to protect their content from AI farming.

Despite the government claiming the plans will encourage AI developers to be “more transparent about their model training datasets,” critics argue that this undermines creators by treating their work as a free resource unless they actively defend it.

This could harm smaller creators or organizations that lack the resources to enforce their rights.

Also, without precise mechanisms to monitor and enforce transparency, creative industries could remain unaware of how their content is used.

Calls to Counter AI Copyright Theft

Kidron’s amendments, which will be voted on this Tuesday, would impose “transparency requirements” to allow art owners to “identify when and where their work has been taken.”

The peer’s amendments would force big tech companies with ties to Britain to obey UK copyright law while training AI.

Baroness Kidron said the changes would help protect the property rights on which 2.4 million livelihoods depend.

“Creatives want to work with AI companies, but they don’t want to be annihilated by them,” she added.

Kidron said the government had “got its maths wrong” if it believed handing Britain’s “creative crown jewels to Silicon Valley shareholders will create growth.’

“The government has made a mistake in their approach, and they should have the humility and common sense – for the sake of the artists, the next generation of artists, and for the sake of UK plc – to put this right,” she added.

Celebrities Team Up

The amendments have been backed by the recently created Creative Rights in AI Coalition, which is made up of the UK’s leading media groups.

Your Song singer Elton John warned  against the government’s plans, claiming that the wheels were in motion to allow “AI companies to ride roughshod over the traditional copyright laws that protect artists’ livelihoods.”

“This will allow global big tech companies to gain free and easy access to artists’ work in order to train their artificial intelligence and create competing music,” John added. “This will dilute and threaten young artists’ earnings even further. The musician community rejects it wholeheartedly.”

Beatles star Paul McCartney also joined the calls for the government to reconsider its plans.

“We’re the people, you’re the Government. You’re supposed to protect us. That’s your job,” McCartney told the BBC on Sunday.

“The truth is, the money’s going somewhere… Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote Yesterday?”

The Creative Rights in AI Coalition welcomed Baroness Kidron’s “identification of transparency—coupled with a strong copyright protection framework—as key issues in helping protect the UK’s creative economy.”