Paul McCartney issues a statement regarding the risks AI poses to music creators

In December 2024, the UK government initiated a consultation aimed at overhauling UK copyright law, enabling AI developers to use creators’ online content for model development unless the rights holders choose to opt out.

From Copyright and Artificial Intelligence – GOV.UK:

Both our creative industries and our AI sector are UK strengths. They are vital to our national mission to grow the economy. This consultation sets out our plan to deliver a copyright and AI framework that rewards human creativity, incentivises innovation and provides the legal certainty required for long-term growth in both sectors.

At present, the application of UK copyright law to the training of AI models is disputed. Rights holders are finding it difficult to control the use of their works in training AI models and seek to be remunerated for its use. AI developers are similarly finding it difficult to navigate copyright law in the UK, and this legal uncertainty is undermining investment in and adoption of AI technology.

This status quo cannot continue. It risks limiting investment, innovation, and growth in the AI sector, and in the wider economy. It effectively prevents creative industries from exercising their rights.

There is great strength and breadth of feeling about the best way forward. This government recognises that it must tackle the difficult choices now to unlock growth, innovation and protect human creativity. This consultation seeks views on how we can deliver a solution that achieves our key objectives for the AI sector and creative industries.

We[’ve] got to be careful about it because it could just take over and we don’t want that to happen particularly for the young composers and writers [for] who, it may be the only way they[’re] gonna make a career. If AI wipes that out, that would be a very sad thing indeed.

Paul McCartney – From The Guardian, December 10, 2024

Sir, The government’s proposal to exempt Silicon Valley from adhering to creative copyright in building its AI platforms would represent a wholesale giveaway of rights and income from the UK’s creative sectors to Big Tech. It would smash a hole in the moral right of creators to present their work as they wish and would undermine our 300-year-old gold-standard copyright system, which supports individual artists and creative businesses, large and small.

The proposal is wholly unnecessary and counterproductive, jeopardising not only the country’s international position as a beacon of creativity but also the resulting jobs, economic contribution and soft power — and especially harming new and young artists who represent our nation’s future.

The UK’s robust copyright system is one of the main reasons why rights holders work in Britain, bringing much-needed inward investment. The creative industries contribute £126 billion to the UK economy annually and employ 2.4 million people, 70 per cent of whom live outside London. They drive tourism, contributing to our standing across the globe, and they bring joy and community spirit to our people, while forging a culture in which we are all reflected.

The government should embrace the Kidron amendments introduced by the House of Lords into the Data (Use and Access) Bill. They are fair and they represent the best interests of the UK and its creative industries without undermining the development of AI. In fact, they harness the power of copyright to drive innovation in the age of AI.

Britain’s creative industries want to play their part in the AI revolution, as they have with new technologies in the past. But if this is to succeed, they need to do so from a firm intellectual-property base. If not, Britain will lose out on its best growth opportunity.

There is no moral or economic argument for stealing our copyright. Taking it away will devastate the industry and steal the future of the next generation.

Simon Beaufoy, Barbara Broccoli, Kate Bush, Stuart Camp, Matthew Dunster, Sam Fender, Helen Fielding, Rachel Fuller, Sir Stephen Fry, David Furnish, Dame Pippa Harris, Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, Sir Elton John, Paul King, Simon Le Bon, Dua Lipa, Alastair Lloyd Webber, Lord Lloyd-Webber, Sir Paul McCartney, Martin McDonagh, Sir Michael Morpurgo, Lucy Prebble, Sir Simon Rattle, Philip Ridley, Michael Rosen, Dame Hannah Rothschild, Ed Sheeran, Sting, Sir Tom Stoppard, Pete Townshend, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Matthew Warchus, Jeanette Winterson, Andrew Wylie

From Times letters: Protecting UK’s creative copyright against AI