About one week after Hollywood luminaries and industry associations such as the Writers Guild of America and the Recording Industry Association joined forces in the Human Artistry Campaign to criticize AI giants for stealing their content, creative groups in the U.K. have banded together to demand AI protections from their government.
The Society of Authors (SoA), Association of Illustrators, and a handful of other professional organizations in the arts released a report today arguing that, unless the U.K. government implements a regulatory framework for generative AI development, the jobs of authors, illustrators, musicians, performers, and photographers are at serious risk.
The report, entitled Brave New World? Justice for Creators in the Age of Gen AI, shows that many people in the creative sector have already suffered economic losses due to AI companies using their content without their consent or renumeration.
Authors have been hit hard, according to the report.
86% of authors surveyed in Brave New World? say that AI has already reduced their earnings, 72% say that job opportunities have been cut, and 57% say that their career is no longer sustainable. Additionally, 43% of literary translators and 37% of SoA illustrators say their earnings have fallen due to AI, while 36% and 26%, respectively, report cancelled or redirected commissions.
By scraping pirated book datasets, tech firms have also trained their models to replicate the distinct styles of well-known authors and illustrators. The report notes that Chris Haughton, the award-winning children’s book illustrator, was able to create “a squirrel in the style of Chris Haughton” using the MidJourney image generator. In one dataset, the cover for his 2010 book A Bit Lost appeared 88 times.
To prevent things from getting worse, the trade associations behind the report call on the government to set a global standard for “ethical, human-centered” generative AI deployment with the implementation of a new regulatory framework they call CLEAR. The acronym calls for an emphasis on creator consent; licensing schema; ethical use of training data; accountability around how copyright-protected works have been used; and remuneration and rights.
The associations maintain that the CLEAR framework, “reflects what creators are asking for, not a rejection of technology, but clear rules that allow innovation to develop in a way that respects their creative work.”
The report notes that the U.K. government has done little so far to compel AI companies to respect copyright.
“The U.K. government is presiding over one of the greatest acts of theft in modern history: the stripping of the U.K.’s creative industries of their rights, livelihoods, and control over their work,” writes filmmaker Baroness Beeban Kidron in a foreword to the report.
She added, “While ministers speak publicly of ‘balance’ and 'patience,’ they have failed to explain why global AI corporations worth billions should be granted privileged access to the cultural assets of this country—without permission, payment, or accountability—while individual U.K. creators are asked by their own government to sacrifice their futures.”
