At this week’s London Book Fair, a lot of people were walking around with one particular title wedged under their arms. Called Don’t Steal This Book, its pages are empty apart from the names of thousands of authors, including Kazuo Ishiguro and Richard Osman. It’s a chilling protest against the rampant theft of creative work by tech firms, which could leave future artists unable to earn a living.
Generative AI models require immense quantities of human-created content and some of their developers have been as cavalier about copyright as they are about privacy. The New York Times is currently suing Microsoft and OpenAI for using its journalism to train ChatGPT. As that battle reaches a head, the UK government is about to issue an update on how it proposes to overhaul the intellectual property framework for AI. The UK has one of the world’s most successful creative industries and the oldest copyright law. It also has a government which fears losing out in the global AI race.
Creatives want the existing law to be enforced; tech companies want it loosened. One option under consideration is the creation of a text and data mining (TDM) exception, which would let companies train large-scale AI models in certain circumstances without asking copyright holders for permission. The tech sector says this would help UK AI companies compete on a level playing field with the US, Japan and China and boost AI investment in Britain.