Labour ditches plan to let AI firms use copyrighted works
Source: The Times (UK)
Labour has abandoned plans to allow AI companies to take copyrighted works without permission after a backlash from the creative industries.
Ministers initially proposed reforming copyright law to boost the AI industry but were faced with a campaign of opposition led by Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney, who accused the government of legalising the “theft” of creative works.
They are expected to ditch an “opt-out” policy which would have allowed AI companies to train software on copyrighted works unless the rights holder removed their consent.
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Creatives argued that it was practically and technically difficult to opt out, especially as AI companies do not reveal what data is in their systems.
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Read more: https://www.thetimes.com/uk/technology-uk/article/labour-ditches-plan-to-let-ai-firms-use-copyrighted-works-xkq7hmhrf
Yes, it's a bit difficult to opt out when the AI companies don't want to admit what they stole.
The Times shouldn't have put the word theft in quotation marks, since what those companies did was unquestionably theft, and they knew it. It's why they typically fight like hell to keep from revealing their training data.
The article goes on to explain that only 3% of the people who responded to what's called a consultation, the UK government's formal request for feedback on a planned policy, thought that "let AI companies steal and creatives try to opt out" was a good idea.
For that matter, AI companies had already said it would be too much of a burden on them to allow creatives to opt out.
Labour's technology and culture secretaries also said they're opposed to a commercial copyright exception where the AI companies could rip off creatives while training AI, but would have to pay the creatives if they wanted to sell a commercial AI product. The AI companies really hadn't liked that idea.
The only really good solution that's fair to creatives would be to destroy all the illegally trained AI models, including open source models illegally trained before they were released, and force the AI companies to retrain using only intellectual property they have a right to use.
Which AI companies won't do voluntarily because it would destroy their value, and AI models trained only on public domain and legally acquired IP would be vastly inferior to what they have now with all the stolen IP - which they're continuing to add to every day.
The value of generative AI is almost entirely in all of that stolen IP, and the robber barons hope to force countries to give in and legalize the theft.
Good for everyone in the UK and elsewhere who fought this.
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