CRA Responds to the AI Report By the Tony Blair Institute

Rebooting Copyright: How the UK Can Be a Global Leader in the Arts and AI sets a very misinformed and dangerous precedent for creators. The CRA is deeply alarmed by such a misleading report - funded by tech and without a single creator consulted in its production. 

The research calls for the UK Government to press for deregulation to allow unfettered access to copyrighted material, again citing the misleading idea that UK copyright law is broken. This is an extraordinary assertion given that the creative industries are driven by innovation, which in turn is underpinned by copyright. Without this cornerstone there will be no creative industries and the incentive to invest in this £125bn industry will disappear.

There is no attempt to set out how much such a fundamental change to our well respected copyright law would generate in terms of income. And so far we have not seen any figures that would justify sacrificing the creative industries which are such a key part of the economy generating £125bn. 

This report ignores the vital importance of transparency measures concerning AI systems and copyright licensing. Given that there are growing concerns from creators that such proposals benefit AI developers more than rightsholders, the report fails to address key issues remaining around how content has been accessed for training.

We strongly believe that any new system should be opt-in and respect rightsholders' choice to refuse to license their works, should they not want it to be used to train, inference or fine-tune AI - this report not only supports the Government's proposals it also goes much further to erode creators rights.

It also recommends that instead of charging tech companies to use data, UK taxpayers should fund it via an extra charge via (ISPs)  Internet Service Providers for data use - and  funds from this will support a new centre of innovation for AI.

CRA Chair, Deborah Annetts says; “The TBI report, part funded by Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle who has reportedly invested £300 million into TBI, is yet another example of the way policy is being unduly influenced by AI and tech businesses without regard to the harm they are doing to a leading UK industry which employs 2.4 million people.”

 Isabelle Doran, CRA Co-Chair for AI says “The TBI throws creators under the AI-driven bus with their incongruent proposals. Creative professionals have long used tools they control, such as a pen, typewriter, paintbrush, musical instrument, photographic or video camera, and more recently a tablet with a stylus. It is more accurate to compare AI machine programming to manufactured food processing, except you have no control over the output of generative-AI machines – which are merely statistical pattern predictors that have copied billions of creative works. Machines are not humans, and we must stop anthropomorphising what machines do, even with the arrival of AI. The cold hard facts are that certain tech giants have abused their market-positions and simply refuse to pay creators. We need to retain our golden standard copyright framework, and resist giving away our cultural & creative works by diminishing our UK laws, in order to give big tech a free pass and line their pockets.”