If there was a predatory threat to a British chemical works, a major car factory or a large bank then the government would at least consider the case for financial support.
There would be urgent consolations, impact assessments, and ministerial accountability. The government, and particularly one committed to revolutionising Britain’s growth potential, would certainly not legislate to make it easier for all the individuals, communities, and companies involved in the sector to be robbed of their livelihoods.
Yet this is precisely the catastrophe that is about to fall on the UK’s creative sectors – worth at least £120bn a year to the economy. And it is why The Independent, along with every other newspaper, is backing the Make It Fair campaign. Artificial intelligence is profiting from human creativity, and it is time creators got their fair share.
New laws will make it easier for the tech giants, usually foreign concerns, to “scrape” from the internet the precious intellectual property generated by gifted writers, musicians, film makers, photographers, artists, journalists and others.
The “content” is then used to feed generative artificial intelligence software, so that machines can produce fresh work. The aesthetic and civilisational worth of such output is highly debatable - propaganda memes featuring humans with six fingers and “deep fake” pornographers seem to be the main focus for this new technology at the moment.
But, awesome or awful, it cannot be right that the AI sector can grow, arguably parasitically, on the brilliance of others without offering any fair return for the usage.
Ministers plan to change the UK’s laws to favour tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without permission or payment – unless the creators specifically say “no.”
Creators argue this puts the burden on them to police their work and that tech companies should pay for using their content. That is as impractical as it is unfair.
In an earlier, simpler, age we had such a thing as “copyright”, and the fuels were at least clear and tended to favour fairness. Some material was worth more than other, and could be valued accordingly, and a fair tariff for usage determined (and proportionate penalties for its theft). In due course copyrights tend to lapse, and limited, fair, usage permitted.
Now, however, the arrival of this new technology has disrupted things, and the balance of power needs to be reset.
It is demonstrably unfair for creatives to be deprived of the earnings they should expect to make from bringing inspiration, entertainment, joy, education and information to people. The rather more mercenary argument for obliging AI companies to pay for content is that without such income many sources of that very originality will simply be lost for lack of income.
The creative goose that lays these magical golden eggs of human imagination will be killed off, and with it the essential source material for this new Industrial Revolution. If we want great literature, art and journalism to survive and prosper – and to create the content for AI long into the future – then this whole sector has to be placed on a sustainable financial footing. It’s only fair.
