West End impresario Sir Cameron Mackintosh has said the Government’s proposed changes to amend copyright law around artificial intelligence (AI) would be an “idiotic and undemocratic own goal”.
It comes after British stars including Sir Elton John and Simon Cowell backed a campaign calling for plans to allow big firms to use online material for AI without paying the creators to be changed.
Under the proposals, an exemption to copyright would be created for training AI, so tech firms would not need a licence to use copyrighted material, and creators would need to opt-out to prevent their work from being used.
Sir Cameron, who has established himself as a leading figure in musical theatre over the last five decades, pushed back against the plans in an opinion piece for The Times on Wednesday.
“I know firsthand the amount of hard work, talent and time it takes to develop a finished work – whether it succeeds or fails. I’m approaching 80 and I still work 50 to 60 hours a week much of the year”, he wrote.
“So why should our Government be advocating that AI be given the right to mine our work for free?
“In a desperate rush to plug the nation’s leaky finances it is rightly embracing the latest game-changing technical development, but without thinking through the unintended, damaging consequences.”
He continued: “The UK no longer has many industries that are truly world beating and increasing in value, so it would be an idiotic and undemocratic own goal to cripple one of the very few professions where people from any background or race, poor or rich, can succeed.
“So I am indignant that the Government should consider that it has the right to disregard our intellectual and moral rights by handing over, to a handful of powerful high-tech corporations, the fruits of our creative labour for free, enabling them to exploit and make money out of content they did not create, without any reasonable remuneration or say.”
Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn are among more than 1,000 musicians who have recorded a silent album in protest at the proposals as they believe they would greatly damage the creative sector and see artists replaced in the long term.
Some of the UK’s biggest newspapers also launched a coordinated campaign across their front pages last week to raise their concerns about AI’s impact on the creative industries.
Following the push back, Sir Keir Starmer said he wants “creatives to thrive” and that responses to a consultation on the proposals were being reviewed.
Sir Cameron, who has produced three of the world’s longest running musicals – Les Miserables, The Phantom Of The Opera, and Cats – added that this was a “watershed moment” for the Government to “make the right decision for the future not only of our country, but of humanity”.
