It is imperative that every musician and creator has the opportunity to make their voice heard at this future-defining moment. Photo: Shutterstock.
Last week, over 1000 artists released the silent album Is This What We Want?’ in protest at the UK Government’s latest AI proposals.
It came as a UK Government consultation on its AI proposals closed having received over 11,500 submissions - a record for our sector.
Speaking to BBC News about Government’s plans, MU Assistant General Secretary Phil Kear explained: “They want to introduce an exception to copyright law which would allow artificial intelligence companies to use copyrighted works from UK musicians and other creative areas to train their models, without asking any permission from the owners or the creators, and without any payment going back to them either.
“Essentially what you'd be doing is creating AI generated works that would be in competition with the work that they've been trained on for free, making opportunities for human creators less easy to come by and affecting creative workers’ income significantly.
“AI is here whether we like it or not, and the Government is keen to harness AI and make the UK an AI centre of excellence. To an extent there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that human creators, humans everywhere - everyone, from every walk of life - needs to have some kind of protection and some kind of say on whether their creative work is used to train AI or not.”
Ask your MP to protect your rights
Thanks to everyone who has emailed their MP so far. It is imperative that every musician and creator has the opportunity to make their voice heard at this future-defining moment.
Email your MP using our template letter below, asking them to help ensure creators are fairly protected from generative AI training.