Don’t look over your shoulder, but the government is selling the creative industries down the river. On December 17th, in the run-up to Christmas, when most people were busy celebrating, Keir Starmer stuck two fat fingers up at every artist, musician, writer and performer trying to earn a crust from their trade. That day, the government launched a consultation which outlined their preferred route regarding text and data mining, allowing AI companies to train on copyright material unless rights are expressly reserved (by machine readable format) despite the fact that there is no workable method of doing that. The Government is planning to allow big tech firms to ignore traditional copyright rules when training their AI systems.
Peter Kyle, the decidedly substandard Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, says: “The UK has an incredibly rich and diverse cultural sector and a groundbreaking tech sector which is pushing the boundaries of AI. It’s clear that our current AI and copyright framework does not support either our creative industries or our AI sectors to compete on the global stage.”
