Recommendation urging UK copyright overhaul is 'straight from tech playbook'

Baroness Kidron tells Charting Gen AI 'there's no confusion over copyright'

Baroness Kidron image: House of Lords (CC by 3.0)

REACTION FROM creator groups and their parliamentary allies to the UK government’s AI action plan is pouring in to Charting Gen AI. We’ll have a full round-up in the Weekly Newsletter but the response that can’t wait until Friday is from Baroness Kidron, the multi-award winning film director and producer.

Last month Baroness Kidron told the UK’s upper house — where she sits as an independent peer — the UK government had “sold the creative industries down the river” by backing calls from leading hi-techs for the creation of a new copyright exception known as “reserved rights”. The proposed overhaul — on which the government is now consulting — would leave AI developers free to train their generative models on creators’ content unless rights holders opted out.

Recommendation 24 of Matt Clifford’s AI action plan (click to enlarge)

This week’s publication of the AI Opportunities Action Plan — drawn up by venture capitalist Matt Clifford, now the government’s AI opportunities adviser, reporting to prime minister Keir Starmer and technology secretary Peter Kyle — urged the government to “reform” the UK’s current copyright regime, stating “current uncertainty around intellectual property (IP) is hindering innovation”.

Replying to Charting’s email asking for her comments on the wording of recommendation 24, Baroness Kidron said: “It is straight from the tech playbook.” The AI companies had built products using creators’ content “as raw material” without paying. “There is no confusion about copyright, it’s just that they took without asking. It is shocking that a government that promised a period of rule of law is enabling theft at scale.

“I have never been a political pessimist but if the government favours a few big tech companies over 2.4 million people who wake up every day to create things of cultural value — often from nothing but their imagination — then they have not understood the political maths of the last decade. People need the dignity of earning a decent living. They will not tolerate a government that disenfranchises them.”

Responding to Clifford’s recommendation 24 the government said it had “launched a consultation”. That is due to close on February 25, yet the delivery timeline for Clifford’s recommendation states “end of 2024”. The response said nothing about proven technology being in place allowing creators to opt out. Did that sound to Baroness Kidron like the government had already made up its mind?

“They absolutely have,” she replied. “Listen to the speeches of the prime minister and technology secretary: all hail AI. What they fail to do is give us proper figures,” she said, pointing to the claim that AI adoption could grow the UK economy by £400 billion by 2030 — far less than the total contribution of the UK’s creative industries over the next five years.

“Five times £126 billion is more than the productivity gain. Secondly, if you look at the footnote of that figure it’s to a report bought and paid for by Google and written by the lobbyists at Public First. The methodology of that report shows that to come up with that figure they ... asked an AI model. And what account has the secretary of state made for where the money accrues, ie how much in the US vs how much to the UK, and the delivery costs of his plans and job displacement?”

Baroness Kidron — who advises the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University — added that in the last 48 hours she had been contacted by “more than a dozen global experts on AI asking if the government is naive, careless or corrupt”. “I have replied that it is not corrupt.”

🚨OUR QUICK TAKE: UK government’s AI action plan opens new front in creators’ battle for copyright

• More reaction to the action plan and other gen AI developments that threaten to reshape the human-made media landscape in Friday’s Weekly Newsletter

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