Paul McCartney and Dua Lipa call on the UK to pass AI copyright transparency law

Last week, Paul McCartney, Dua Lipa, Ian McKellen, Elton John, and hundreds of others in the UK creative industry signed an open letter backing an effort to force AI firms to reveal the copyrighted works used to train their models.  They support an amendment to the UK’s Data (Use and Access) Bill proposed by letter organizer Beeban Kidron, adding the requirement, which the UK government has opposed.

The British House of Lords passed the amendment yesterday, 272 to 125, reports The Guardian, and now it’s going back to the House of Commons, where the amendment could be removed again. The British government says the fight over the amendment “is holding back both the creative and tech sectors and needs to be resolved by new legislation,” writes The Guardian. 

From the letter:

We will lose an immense growth opportunity if we give our work away at the behest of a handful of powerful overseas tech companies, and with it our future income, the UK’s position as a creative powerhouse, and any hope that the technology of daily life will embody the values and laws of the United Kingdom.

Also signed by many media companies, music publishers, and arts organizations, the letter insists that the amendments “will spur a dynamic licensing market that will enhance the role of human creativity in the UK, positioning us as a key player in the global AI supply chain.”

Companies like OpenAI and Meta have been accused in court of using copyrighted material without permission to train their models. Baroness Beeban Kidron, who tabled the amendment, writes that although the UK’s creative industries welcome creative advancements enabled by AI, “…how AI is developed and who it benefits are two of the most important questions of our time.” 

“My lords,” The Guardian quotes Kidron as saying yesterday, “it is an assault on the British economy and it is happening at scale to a sector worth £120bn to the UK, an industry that is central to the industrial strategy and of enormous cultural import.”