UK Arts and Media Reject Plan To Let AI Firms Use Copyrighted Material (theguardian.com) 32
Writers, publishers, musicians, photographers, movie producers and newspapers have rejected the Labour government's plan to create a copyright exemption to help AI companies train their algorithms. From a report: In a joint statement, bodies representing thousands of creatives dismissed the proposal made by ministers on Tuesday that would allow companies such as Open AI, Google and Meta to train their AI systems on published works unless their owners actively opt out.
The Creative Rights in AI Coalition (Crac) said existing copyright laws must be respected and enforced rather than degraded. The coalition includes the British Phonographic Industry, the Independent Society of Musicians, the Motion Picture Association and the Society of Authors as well as Mumsnet, the Guardian, Financial Times, Telegraph, Getty Images, the Daily Mail Group and Newsquest.
Their intervention comes a day after the technology and culture minister Chris Bryant told parliament the proposed system, subject to a 10-week consultation, would "improve access to content by AI developers, whilst allowing rights holders to control how their content is used for AI training."
The Creative Rights in AI Coalition (Crac) said existing copyright laws must be respected and enforced rather than degraded. The coalition includes the British Phonographic Industry, the Independent Society of Musicians, the Motion Picture Association and the Society of Authors as well as Mumsnet, the Guardian, Financial Times, Telegraph, Getty Images, the Daily Mail Group and Newsquest.
Their intervention comes a day after the technology and culture minister Chris Bryant told parliament the proposed system, subject to a 10-week consultation, would "improve access to content by AI developers, whilst allowing rights holders to control how their content is used for AI training."
What's next? (Score:2, Insightful)
...prohibiting art students from studying published work?
ALL human training is done by studying the work of others
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fine. Then make all AI models free to use in perpetuity. Server costs? Training costs? Development costs? All free, forever.
You can't make one argument that it's just "training" and "studying" the works of others, and then justify that it should be a sold product for profit, because the AI company used that data for free, without compensation. So why should they get to repackage it and sell it?
Okay, so you argue that the AI company had to pay to develop the model, so they did something original by creating it. Well, so did the creators of those original works too. What gives anyone else the right to take that work for free?
That's the problem with your thinking. You believe that it is okay for Party A to exploit the work of Party B simply because you found Party A's exploitation useful to you.
Mod parent up! (Score:3)
That response is the most precise and succinct description of the problems at hand.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually yes that is the way it should be, not immediately but the models should be made available publicly so anybody can run them on their own servers after a limited period of time. Paying someone for doing work is reasonable, paying someone forever (or a long time) for work they have already done is not.
Kind of like we do with copyright, but with reasonable time spans say 5 years (that's a number I just made up that sounds reasonable to me). If the AI companies wish to continue to make money the
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Honest question, because I actually don't know how to address this scenario in a fair way. To be clear, I'm asking not to make a point but because I truly do not know and would like to hear your thoughts.
Suppose someone is a struggling artist/writer/inventor/creator, toiling in relative obscurity. Their work has value but is largely unrecognized, for one reason or another. They do not have money to bring attention to their works.
Decades later, their work is suddenly "discovered" by a large corporation.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's another, more realistic scenario, one that is actually very much what is going on with generative AI.
I have a friend who is a talented artist. His works are made digitally, but he is classically trained. He doesn't have a social media presence, but he sells his work to others who commission him after finding his work through word of mouth. So, he is compensated for the art that he does create for others--essentially, a work-for-hire arrangement.
Those who commission him are avid social media users.
Re: What's next? (Score:2)
Currently, we do not have a legal regime that supports the contention that an author retains any rights to a work made for hire, nor do we have one with an enforceable copyright as to "style." So how does the presence of "AI" in your example matter?
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But it is relevant because that's exactly what's happening in real life right now.
The issue here isn't simply about the legal framework or copyright. What I'm trying to bring to light with this particular scenario are the downstream effects of current practice. The proliferation of generative AI models is significantly disruptive to a segment of creators who, whether or not they are in principle protected legally, have their livelihoods threatened. Attempts to adapt their work product are temporary solut
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Does the creator have any right to compensation?
If the creator's work was used without legally purchasing access then yes, absolutely the creator has a right to compensation and the value of that compensation should be determined by the value of the product nowi.e. it will be expensive for the company. However, if the company purchased the legal rights to the work and then used it to develop something that later became valuable then no - the creator sold what they made at what they thought was a fair price at the time and have no further rights to compe
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You can't make one argument that it's just "training" and "studying" the works of others, and then justify that it should be a sold product for profit, because the AI company used that data for free, without compensation.
Of course you can. That is how Art and Music work. Artists learn by studying the works of others. Then they use what they have learned to create something and sometimes -if it is any good- they sell it for money!
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It's like non-programmers talking about computer languages. It happened once, there was this guy in a bar, and he opened his mouth and started talking complete and utter nonsense about web programming in an attempt to impress me, going on and on making up stuff on the fly, truly embarrassing. It is exactly the same. And yet somehow a few technical people (with no artistic experience) feel entitled to do that when talki
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If you are not a trained artist. Please cease giving out opinions you know nothing about.
Please go fuck yourself.
Artists commonly study the works of other artists. In many cases, they reproduce the works of great artists to master the techniques used.
Re: (Score:3)
understand you are an ignorant fool
and just like when you meet others that talk absolute bollocks and that gets to you
it is now you - who is doing the same.
while master copies are sometimes encouraged, that is a minimal part of art training.
this is instructed by a teacher, and i noticed an interesting effect those that do too much of it become worse and worse as time progresses, much like a singer trying to emulate others' voices never finding their own.
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You can't make one argument that it's just "training" and "studying" the works of others, and then justify that it should be a sold product for profit
But all human training is exactly that. I doubt there is anyone working who is not using some skill that was trained and developed using copyrighted mateial, even if that skill is just reading. So should all of us work for free too now?
Okay, so you argue that the AI company had to pay to develop the model, so they did something original by creating it. Well, so did the creators of those original works too.
I agree. However, the creators of the original work are selling access to that work for a given price to enable others to purchase and read that work to derive ebenfit from it. Provided the AI creators do likewise i.e. use a copy they have legally purchased and then have th
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But the AI companies aren't buying the content in the first place. They took it without compensation to the original creators, and the proposal in question is to grant them a license to do this without any compensation unless the creator locates each AI company to opt out. And the reason why they want it structured this way is because AI companies know that if they have to pay for content up front, they couldn't afford to do it. So they take it.
The way they're getting around this issue now is shifting th
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we gladly support other artists, teachers, authors.
we pay for their training material.
browsing doesn't teach you how to draw or paint.
you have no idea how rigorous *proper* art training can be.
and here's a clue:
to become good you should be drawing from nature almost exclusively, live models, still life, rarely from photographs.
and even if from photos - I subscribe to Croquis Cafe (look it up) in case I need to check proportions
There are other similar resources specific for
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ALL human training is done by studying the work of others
At great cost. Each college student pays thousands of dollars for books, and much more for tuition.
AI is still expensive to train (much more than educating a person), but once trained, it can produce millions of times more output than a person.
Pirates ahoy! (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no meaningful case for arguing that the use of copyright material materially undermines the protection it provides to creatives. All their resistance is is an attempt to gouge tech companies. Whilst this may appear an attractive option, ultimately such gouging merely prevents the advance of the technology.
The US constitution is clear: copyrights are granted to 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Art' Article 1 Section 8. This is doing the opposite.
Re: Pirates ahoy! (Score:3)
Agreed. They're just rent seekers. They have no moral standing whatsoever after the Disney Extension.
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There is no meaningful case for arguing that the use of copyright material materially undermines the protection it provides to creatives. All their resistance is is an attempt to gouge tech companies. Whilst this may appear an attractive option, ultimately such gouging merely prevents the advance of the technology.
The US constitution is clear: copyrights are granted to 'to promote the Progress of Science and useful Art' Article 1 Section 8. This is doing the opposite.
This is a report from the UK. I don't know why you're wittering on about US stuff.
It helps articulate what copyright is FOR! (Score:2)
Yes, it's the US constitution, but at the time Copyright was only just emerging. So we can see from how the Founders saw its role how it was generally understood. Of course, interestingly, it would appear to justify - for Americans - not respecting copyright on porn, which probably does not pass the 'useful art' test... ;)
I'll take that (Score:2)
Robots.txt extension needed (Score:1)
We need a way to extend the robots.txt format to say "Yes, please index my site; No you may not train your AI on it".
The line at copyright *STATUS* makes no sense (Score:2)
Re: The line at copyright *STATUS* makes no sense (Score:2)
colour me (Score:2)
\o/ (Score:1)
Hello? How are AI companies eliminate all other companies if you guys don't play ball? wtf?
Ban Copyrights (Score:2)
The copyright system does not serve the people or the artists and serves only the large corporations. When companies are legally forbidden from removing negative reviews; they instead turn to copyright. When someone reveals how to fix a problem, they instead file a copyright infringement suit.
It is not being used properly and should be eliminated.