Annie Lennox performs at a reception for International Women's Day 2015. Image: US Embassy London/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)
Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Hans Zimmer are among the 1,000 artists supporting the album.
In response to proposed changes to UK copyright law that would allow AI developers to train their models using copyrighted material unless an ‘opt out’ was selected, more than 1,000 artists have released a silent album. The track listing spells out the message: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”
Annie Lennox, Kate Bush, Billy Ocean and Hans Zimmer, among others, have backed the album titled ‘Is This What We Want?’, which contains 12 silent recordings of empty studios, and is available on streaming services, with all profits to benefit UK charity Help Musicians.
Under the UK government proposal, AI developers would have the freedom to circumnavigate copyright law in order to train their algorithms via text or data mining using material already available online. Artists and creators have the power to opt out in a ‘rights reservation’, however, its critics have said that it isn’t feasible for artists to constantly monitor their work across the internet, or contact thousands of different AI service providers.
In a statement, Ed Newton-Rex, the organiser of the album protest, said: “The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them.
“It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary. The UK can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus. This album shows that, however the government tries to justify it, musicians themselves are united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan.”
Newton-Rex resigned from Stability AI in 2023 over the company’s stance on copyright. Late last year, he organised a statement signed by more than 13,000 creatives to protest unlawful AI use.
In her own statement, singer Kate Bush asked, “in the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?”
AI and GenAI have been a source of contention for artists and content creators for quite some time now. In April of last year, singer Billie Eilish was among more than 200 creators calling on AI companies to stop devaluing the rights of human artists. Later that year, a copyright lawsuit filed by a group of artists against companies using text-to-image generators, including Stability AI, Midjourney and DeviantArt, was allowed to proceed by a US judge.
Last month, Canadian technology company Thomson Reuters won a favourable partial summary judgement against AI start-up Ross Intelligence in a copyright infringement lawsuit. In 2020, Reuters accused Ross Intelligence of unlawfully copying and using content from its Westlaw platform to train its AI models.
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