Government Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence

Today sees the closing date for the UK Government Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.

If you are a creative or value the role of the Creative sector in the UK I would implore you to respond. Here is a wealth of fantastic resources to help:

Below have copied my letter to our MP:

Dear Anna Sabine,

I'm writing to you in relation to the Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence which closes today.

I'm furious and terrified. As an artist and illustrator based in your constituency I cannot be anything but scared at the proposals currently being discussed by our government regarding AI usage of creative works and the copyright changes they require.

First things first, I am not a luddite. I have spent the last eighteen years working at the forefront of web technologies. I started making websites - initially for government and public services - because I saw the internet as a fantastic tool for democratising access to information and for the sharing of opinions, knowledge and creativity.

To some extent this has proven to be the case. However over the past 18 years I have also seen the control of these spaces increasingly fall into the hands of a select few. And it has become clear that there is no ulterior goal of human betterment leading their agendas. This is ultimately about profit and control and - if I was feeling conspiratorial - then I'd perhaps also suggest more worrying underlying agendas. But let’s stick to the money one for now and perhaps also the ethical implications.

The development in recent years of new technologies such as deep learning processors and graphics processing units has opened up fantastic opportunities for things like machine learning to assist with interpreting large and complex datasets in a way that simply was not possible before. This is why we see arguments such as "AI is great for solving cancer" bandied about in reference to the Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence.

However this is not what artists, illustrators, musicians and other creators are objecting to, as you would have seen on the front pages of any newspaper today.

The consultation clearly recognises the significance of the creative sectors and that "the UK is a world-leader in the creative industries, a high-growth sector powered by human creativity – from music, film, and design, to visual arts, theatre, and media. These industries enhance our lives and create economic and social value." (B.1 30)

I couldn’t disagree with any of that statement. Furthermore I would argue that the key part of this statement is the word "human". Creativity is a fundamental form of human expression. It originates in and reacts to our role as individual actors within a world that is more than borrowed terabytes of data. It is about our lives, our experiences and our relationships. The moments that went towards making us who we are when we create.

So to see this endeavour - this culmination of lived experience - reduced to fodder for text and data mining "for any purpose, including commercial purposes" (C.1 75a) is frankly insulating.

Reducing our work to units of data for generating art and other forms of creative expression does little more than reduce us to expensive and expendable cogs in a wheel of commercial endeavour that the AI sector is seeking to replicate or worse, replace.

I'm sorry if this sounds overly dramatic but as a creative that has worked at the coalface of internet technologies for almost two decades this is the reality I see in front of us. And that is why I implore you to reject the current consultation and its proposals.

Copyright has to be implied at the point of origin. We cannot assume an opt-out method.

We are more than ones and zeros.

Cole