Former British Deputy PM and Meta apologist, Sir Nick Clegg, says that forcing AI firms to ask copyright holders for permission before using their content will destroy the AI industry over night. Clegg, who was David Cameron’s deputy in the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition that governed Britain between 2010 and 2015. He then moved to Zuckcorp to become president of global policy affairs. Clegg told an audience at a literature festival that requiring tech firms to seek permission from creators to use copyrighted materials to train AI models is unworkable. Clegg, according to The Times (19459038), claimed that any such laws would “basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight,” .
Members of the UK’s House of Lords voted this month in favor of amendments that would have prevented copyrighted works from being simply copied by AI companies.
Government ministers blocked the amendmentthat would have required tech companies to reveal which copyright material was used to train their AI models. Clegg stepped down from his role as the president of global affairs for Facebook parent company Meta in January of this year. He was speaking in East Sussex to promote a new bookcalled How to Save the Internet : the Threat to Global Connection at the Age of AI & Political Conflict.
When questioned, the former politician seemed confused about the issue of AI and copies rights. He agreed that people should be able to opt-out of having their work used as model training.
Then he reportedly said “quite a lot of voices say ‘you can only train on my content, [if you] first ask.’ And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data.” Adding: “I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first. I just don’t see how that would work. And by the way if you did it in Britain and no one else did it, you would basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.”
Which is it, Mr Clegg. Do creators have a right to opt-out or not? Asking for their permission afterward is counterproductive. Admitting that the AI model is dead without allowing LLM trainers to break the laws doesn’t sound much like an argument. Clegg’s background makes it unlikely that he would side with the UK Government and big business. The Tony Blair Institute founded by the former prime minister also endorsed exceptions to copyright laws that would allow developers to train AI models. Microsoft Copilot appears even when it is not wanted.
The major AI companies haven’t waited for permission yet. A recent studyfound that OpenAI mined copies of copyright-protected material to train its GPT models, for instance.
According to Baroness Kidron who proposed the Lords’ amendments: “How AI is developed and who it benefits are two of the most important questions of our time.” she warned the UK creative industry “must not be sacrificed to the interests of a handful of US tech companies.”
As detailed in the AI Opportunities Action Plan published earlier this year, the UK government has made AI the central plank of their plans for economic revitalization of the country. This includes “AI Growth Zones” streamlined planning processes that allow developers to override local authorities and local community concerns when locating massive new AI datacenters.
There is an alternative: Last month, we reported about a new licensing schemewhich aims to allow developers of large language model (LLMs), while paying publishers for the privilege, to use copyrighted data.
The UK is not the only country where copyright protections are being shredded to benefit AI developers. Every nation is afraid of being left behind in a tech arms race. Recently, it was reported that the head of US Copyright Office had been sacked after the agency concluded AI developers’ use copyrighted materials went beyond existing doctrines on fair use. (r)
