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Dear [add your MP name here],
I am your constituent living at [add your full address and postcode here].
As a musician/creator, I want to express my opposition to the government’s proposal to introduce a broad copyright exception for commercial generative AI training. Such a move would be profoundly damaging to the UK’s creative industries.
Generative AI directly competes with the creative works it is trained on, many of which are produced by artists, writers, musicians, and other creators who contribute immeasurably to our cultural and economic landscape.
While this is self-evident, it is already supported by a growing evidence base, such as this Harvard Business Review study that showed the introduction of ChatGPT reduced writing jobs by 30% and coding jobs by 20%, and the introduction of AI image generators reduced image creation jobs by 17%. Allowing AI companies to train models on copyrighted work without fair compensation undermines both the rights and the livelihoods of creators.
Public sentiment supports this view: recent data from YouGov shows that 72% of the public believe creators should be paid by AI companies for the use of their work in training datasets.
This aligns with previous research from the AI Policy Institute in the US that shows that 74% of the public think AI companies should compensate creators for training, vs. 9% who think they shouldn't. And 37,000 people, including many of the UK's most respected authors, actors and musicians, recently signed a Statement on AI Training that rejected unlicensed generative AI training - which is, somewhat inconceivably, precisely what the government is now proposing.
Moreover, the government’s proposal to rely on a ‘rights reservation’ system is deeply unfair to creators. It shifts the huge administrative burden of opting out onto creators, and, unsurprisingly, evidence suggests that most people eligible for these opt-out schemes don't realise they can opt out, and miss the chance, meaning their work is used without permission or compensation. For example, two years into the mass adoption of generative AI, 60% of artists haven’t even heard of robots.txt, the most widely-used opt-out scheme.
The proposed changes would disproportionately harm small creators, who are the least likely to reserve their rights and the most vulnerable to being out-competed by AI models trained on their work; as shown by evidence from Cloudflare, who, analysing the top 1 million websites by number of visits, found that the percentage blocking AI crawlers increased with increasing website visits. If enacted, this policy risks driving many of these individuals out of their professions altogether. (I encourage you to read more about the ineffectiveness and unfairness inherent in generative AI opt-out schemes here: https://ed.newtonrex.com/optouts.)
The creative industries are a cornerstone of the UK economy, contributing 5% of GDP. Weakening copyright protections as outlined in the government's proposal would jeopardise not only the livelihoods of countless creators but also the country’s broader economic interests.
I urge you to drop any proposed legislation that would weaken copyright law and harm our vital creative industries. Please ensure creators are fairly protected, and their rights are upheld.
Yours sincerely,
[Add your name and full address with postcode again here]