The U.K. Government is pushing ahead with plans to attract AI companies to the area by changing copyright laws. The proposed changes would let developers train AI models using artists’ content from the internet without permission or payment, unless creators “opt out”.
A group of 1,000 musicians released an “unsilent album” on Monday to protest. The planned changesThe album, titled “Is this what we want?” features tracks by Kate Bush, Imogen Heap and contemporary classical composers Max Richter, Thomas Hewitt Jones and others. It also includes co-writing credit from There are hundreds moreincluding big names such as Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn. Mystery Jets, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, Riz Ahmad, Tori Amos and Hans Zimmer.
This is not Band Aid 2. It’s not music. The artists recorded empty studios and performance areas as a symbol of the impact they believe the proposed copyright law changes will have. Hewitt Jones’ contribution to the album was “You can hear my cat moving around.”
Hewitt Jones said, “You can listen to my cats moving.” “I have two cats who disturb me all day while I’m working.” Here
This album is the latest in a series of U.K. initiatives to raise awareness about the copyright issues in AI training. Similar protests is underway in other markets like the U.S. and highlights a global concern amongst artists.
Ed Newton Rex, the organizer of the project, is also leading a larger campaign against AI training that does not have a license. A More than 47,000 writers and visual artists have signed the petition that he started. Nearly 10,000 of these people have signed up in the last five weeks, since the U.K. announced its AI strategy. Newton-Rex, who founded a nonprofit organization in AI last year to certify companies that don’t scrape or train on great works without permission, said
he had also “run a nonprofit AI for the past year.”
Newton Rex came to advocate for artists after having fought for both sides. He was classically trained as a music composer and later created an AI-based platform called Jukedeck, which allowed people to bypass copyrighted work by creating their own. The pitch was so catchy, where he rapped about the benefits of using AI for music composition, that it won the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield Competition in 2015. He worked on music services for a while at TikTok after Jukedeck was acquired.
Newton-Rex, who spent several years working at other tech companies such as Snap and Stability before, is now pondering how to build the next without destroying the past. He’s pondering that idea with a unique perspective: he now lives in the Bay Area, where he shares a home with Alice Newton-Rex who is VP of WhatsApp product.
This album release coincides with the planned changes in copyright laws in the U.K., which would require artists who don’t want their work to be used for AI training to “opt out”.
Newton Rex believes this creates an effective lose-lose situation since there is currently no opt-out option in place or any way to clearly track what specific material was fed into any AI systems.
We know that opt out schemes are not used,” he said. “This will give 90% [to] or 95% of the work of people to AI companies.” It’s a fact.
According to the artists, the solution is to produce their work in other markets that may offer better protections. Hewitt Jones, who threw an actual working keyboard into the harbor of Kent during a protest, said he is considering markets such as Switzerland for distribution in the future.
The Wild West of the Internet is nothing like the rock and hard places of a Kent harbor.
For decades, we’ve been told to share our work on the internet because it helps us gain exposure. Now, AI companies, and, incredibly, governments, are saying that Newton-Rex’s work is available online for free …”. “Now artists are stopping creating and sharing their work. A number of musicians have contacted me and said that this is what they are doing.
According to the organizers, the album will be widely posted on music platforms Tuesday. Any donations or proceeds from the playing of the album will go to Help Musicians. Ingrid joined TechCrunch in February 2012 and is based in London.
Ingrid was a writer and editor for TechCrunch before joining the site in February 2012. She is based out of London. Ingrid covers mobile media, digital advertising, and the intersections between these.
She is most comfortable in English when it comes to her work but also speaks Russian, Spanish, and French (in order of proficiency).
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