More than 30 performing arts leaders in the UK, including the bosses of the National Theatre, Opera North and the Royal Albert Hall, have joined the chorus of creative industry concern about the government’s plans to let artificial intelligence companies use artists’ work without permission.
In a statement they said performing arts organisations depend on a “fragile ecosystem” of freelancers who rely on copyright to sustain their livelihoods. They also urged the government to support the “moral and economic rights” of the creative community in music, dance, drama and opera.
The 35 signatories of the statement include the chief executives of the Sadler’s Wells dance theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and the Leeds Playhouse.
“We join with many in the creative community in expressing our concern about the government’s plans to diminish creative copyright by giving an exemption to AI companies,” said the statement. “Our community of highly skilled creative workers depend on a fragile ecosystem of freelance creatives, many of whom rely on copyright to sustain their practice, and most of whom have spent many decades honing their craft.”
The performing arts bosses added that they embraced advances in technology and were “participants” in innovation, but stated the government’s plans risked undermining their ability to participate in the development and deployment of AI.
The statement asked ministers to assert a creative professional’s automatic right to their work, instead of pushing ahead with a proposal to give AI companies access to creative work unless the copyright holders opt out of the process. Critics of the opt out plan have described it as unfair and impractical.
The performing arts bosses also asked that the government impose transparency duties on AI companies, detailing what copyrighted material was ingested into their models and how they acquired. The government has proposed transparency requirements in its copyright consultation.
“The sheer wonderment of world-class music, drama, dance and opera is essential to the joy of being human. We urge the government to support the human creative endeavour at its heart,” said the performing arts leaders.
The government proposals have met with a wave of criticism from leading figures in the UK’s creative industries, including Sir Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Richard Osman.
Generative AI models, the term for technology that underpins powerful tools like the ChatGPT chatbot, are trained on a vast amount of data in order to generate their responses. The main source for this material is on the open web, which contains a vast array of data from the contents of Wikipedia to newspaper articles and online book archives.
A government spokesperson said the status quo in the relationship between AI and copyright was “holding back the creative industries, media and AI sector from realising their full potential — and that cannot continue”. The government has said its new approach “protects the interests of both AI developers and rights holders and delivers a solution which allows both to thrive”.
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