The UK government is pushing forward with plans to attract more AI companies to the region by changing copyright laws. The proposed changes will allow developers to train AI models on the content of artists found on the Internet – without permission or payment – unless the authors refuse to do so in advance. However, not everyone is dancing to the same tune.
On Monday, a group of 1,000 musicians released a “silent album” to protest the planned changes. The album – titled “Is This What We Want?” – features tracks by Kate Bush, Imogen Heap, modern classical composers Max Richter and Thomas Hewitt Jones, among others. It also features hundreds more collaborators, including such famous names as Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn, Billy Ocean, The Clash, Mystery Jets, Yusuf/Kat Stevens, Riz Ahmed, Tori Amos, and Hans Zimmer.
But this is not Band Aid Part 2. And this is not a collection of music. Instead, the artists have put together recordings of empty studios and concert venues as a symbolic representation of what they believe will be the consequences of the planned changes to copyright law.
“You can hear my cats moving around,” Hewitt Jones described his contribution to the album. “I have two cats in my studio that bother me all day when I’m working.”
Speaking even more frankly, the titles of the 12 tracks on the album contain a certain message: “The British government should not legalize music theft for the benefit of AI companies.”
The album is just the latest step in the UK to draw attention to the issue of copyright infringement in AI training. Similar protests are taking place in other markets, such as the United States, which demonstrates the global concern of artists.
Ed Newton-Rex, who organized the project, is also leading a larger campaign against AI training without licensing. A petition he started has been signed by over 47,000 writers, artists, actors, and other creative industries, with nearly 10,000 signing on in the last five weeks alone, since the UK government announced its big AI strategy.
Newton-Rex said that for the past year, he has also “been running an AI non-profit organization where we certify companies that are basically not scraping and training on large robots without permission.”
Newton-Rex came to defend artists after having been on both sides. Trained as a classical composer, he later created an AI-powered music writing platform called Jukedeck that allowed people to bypass the use of copyrighted works by creating their own. His colorful presentation, in which he rapped and rhymed about the benefits of using AI to write music, won the TechCrunch Battlefield startup competition in 2015. Subsequently, Jukedeck was acquired by TikTok, where he worked on music services for some time.
After several years of working at other tech companies like Snap and Stability, Newton-Rex returned to thinking about how to build the future without burning the past. He’s thinking about this idea from a rather interesting perspective: he now lives in the Bay Area with his wife, Alice Newton-Rex, VP of Product at WhatsApp.
The album’s release comes just ahead of planned changes to copyright law in the UK that will force artists who don’t want their work used to train AI to “opt out” in advance.
Newton-Rex believes that this effectively creates a no-win situation for artists, as there is no opt-out method or clear way to track what material has been uploaded to any artificial intelligence system.
“We know that opt-out schemes just don’t apply,” he said. “It’s just going to give 90% [to] 95% of people’s work to AI companies. That’s for sure.”
The solution, artists say, is to sell their work in other markets where it can be better protected. Hewitt Jones, who recently threw a working keyboard into the harbor in Kent during a personal protest (he later fished it out broken), said he is considering markets like Switzerland to distribute his music in the future.
But the rockiness and harshness of the Kent harbor is nothing compared to the Wild West of the internet.
“For decades, we’ve been told to share our work online because it’s good for popularization. But now AI companies and, incredibly, governments are turning around and saying: “Well, you put this online for free…” Newton-Rex said. “So now artists just stop making and sharing their work. Several artists have contacted me to say that this is what they are doing.”
According to the organizers, the album will be posted on music platforms sometime on Tuesday, and all donations or proceeds from its sale will go to the Help Musicians charity organization.
