Victory again for tireless AI transparency campaigner. Will the government now act?
Ministers have offered nothing of substance, Baroness Kidron tells Charting Gen AI
CREATORS’ CHAMPION Baroness Kidron has won the latest round in the parliamentary clash over AI transparency. By a decisive 242 votes to 116 the UK’s upper house enthusiastically backed her amendments to a bill that would require the government to report the scale of copyrighted material used to train AI models without rightsholders’ consent. The government would also need to publish a draft bill forcing the hi-techs to reveal which works had been used.
In a blistering speech Baroness Kidron accused government ministers of not sufficiently understanding the plight of creators, and of being “extraordinarily cavalier”. Her amendments — this was the fourth attempt to attach emergency transparency provisions to a data bill that’s going back and forth between the Lords and the Commons — had sought to “rescue an AI policy written by a serial tech investor with a conflict of interest so deep” that at some point it would feature in a drama on the UK’s leading commercial network, ITV. While not naming him, that advisor is tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford, author of the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan which in January said IP laws needed to be diluted in favour of AI developers to prevent the UK “falling behind”.
Baroness Kidron told peers the problem facing them was one of “political will”. Her previous amendments had proposed a comprehensive transparency regime, but the government had rejected it as being “too comprehensive”. A proposed regulatory approach had been voted down on the grounds it was “too soon to uphold the law, too soon to stop the stealing, acknowledged by all.” She went on:
“Artists, musicians, designers, writers, conductors, and even the UK’s indigenous AI community which we have worked with side-by-side throughout, are baffled as to why the government is deliberately standing in the way of UK citizens and companies who are trying to control and protect their own property.”
Baroness Kidron — an award-winning filmmaker who sits as an independent in the Lords — said some had suggested the problem was that government ministers and civil servants were all “wage earners”.
“They simply do not understand that the £126 billion creative industry is largely made up of freelancers whose income, sickness benefit, pension, maternity and holiday pay are not contractual but are provided by royalties. Royalties dependent on copyright.”
Quoting tech secretary Peter Kyle who’d defended the removal of her earlier transparency amendment, Baroness Kidron said “it would not be fair to one sector to privilege another”. “It is extraordinary,” said Baroness Kidron, “that the government’s decided, immovable, and strongly held position is that enforcing the law to prevent the theft of UK citizens’ property is unfair to the sector doing the stealing”.
“In what other industrial context does being fair require a national government to support thieves to continue their plunder while simultaneously removing tools of protections from the victim? Balancing and being fair sounds reasonable. But it is neither fair, nor balanced, nor indeed reasonable to stand by while one sector steals from another in full sight.”
Previous amendments had provided transparency so creators could protect themselves. “The government has, and will again today, vote to make indigenous AI and creative industries defenceless,” she said.
“The government is being extraordinarily cavalier about opening our markets with no friction to Big Tech companies. Giving away the future of two sectors so essential to its industrial strategy and undermining its own top priority of economic growth. I wish the government had the humility and strength to change course and make a meaningful effort to build an AI future that every UK citizen can have a stake in.”
Baroness Kidron said her inbox had been “bursting with thanks from individual creators, large corporates and organisations that represent hundreds of thousands of people” as she thanked peers from all sides who had backed her previous amendments, and urged them to do so again. While some might not want the unelected upper house to be standing in the way of the Commons she said it was the government that was “actively failing to protect the property rights of our citizens and businesses” and give them the tools to protect their property rights.
Earlier the government had dangled a series of new concessions: a report on the use of copyrighted works in AI training will additionally address models trained overseas, and how rules should be enforced, and by whom. An economic impact assessment will now be published within nine months rather than a year of the data bill becoming law.
Speaking to Charting Gen AI shortly after the vote Baroness Kidron said the additional reports and accelerated impact assessment timescale were “small victories, and I am glad for them”, but felt ministers had offered nothing of substance. Given the vote it was now up to government ministers to compromise. “If they don’t listen then we will have to continue to shout,” she said.
✨COMMENT: Peers from all sides of the house expressed their frustration that the government had failed to come forward with meaningful proposals that would protect creators now rather than wait for a series of working groups to advise on future policy. There was anger too that ministers were complaining about ‘ping pong’ — the process that follows when neither house can agree on the wording of a bill, so it goes back and forth until one side backs down — while not appearing to listen or offer anything meaningful. The bill now returns to the Commons where Kyle — if he appears — or creative industries minister Sir Chris Bryant will once again use Labour’s huge majority to remove the Kidron amendments from the bill. The government is under pressure to get the rest of the data bill enacted as soon as possible. That it continues to deny creators the most basic protections is a mystery that’s indeed worthy of an ITV drama.
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◾️Further reaction and the key developments that threaten to reshape the global AI regulatory landscape will be in this Friday’s Weekly Newsletter.
To keep up with our looney tunes government, you may want to set a Google alert for the fair use page of copyright.gov. I checked it out today and my trusty gut started rumbling.