Paul McCartney and Dua Lipa among artists urging Starmer to rethink AI copyright plans
Hundreds of leading figures and organisations in the UK’s creative industries, including Coldplay, Paul McCartney, Dua Lipa, Ian McKellen and the Royal Shakespeare Company, have urged the prime minister to protect artists’ copyright and not “give our work away” at the behest of big tech.In an open letter to Keir Starmer, a host of major artists claim creatives’ livelihoods are under threat as wrangling continues over a government plan to let artificial intelligence companies use copyright-protected work without permission.Describing copyright as the “lifeblood” of their professions, the letter warns Starmer that the proposed legal change will threaten Britain’s status as a leading creative power.“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,” the letter says.The letter urges the government to accept an amendment to the data bill proposed by Beeban Kidron, the cross-bench peer and leading campaigner against the copyright proposals.
Kidron, who organised the artists’ letter, is seeking a change that requires AI firms tell copyright owners which individual works they have ingested into their models.Urging parliamentarians on all sides of the political spectrum and in both houses to support the change, the letter says: “We urge you to vote in support of the UK creative industries.Supporting us supports the creators of the future.Our work is not yours to give away.”Spanning the worlds of music, theatre, film, literature, art and media, the more than 400 signatories include Elton John, Kazuo Ishiguro, Annie Lennox, Rachel Whiteread, Jeanette Winterson, the National Theatre and the News Media Association, which represents more than 800 news titles including the Guardian.
Kidron’s amendment will go to a House of Lords vote on Monday, although the government has already signalled its opposition to the change, saying that a consultation process already under way was the correct process for debating alterations to copyright law, which protects someone’s work from being used by others without permission.Under the government proposal, AI companies will be able to use copyright-protected material without permission unless the copyright holder “opts out” of the process by indicating – in an as yet unspecified way – that they do not wish their work to be used for free.Giles Martin, the music producer and son of the Beatles producer George Martin, told the Guardian the opt-out plan could be impractical for young artists.“When Paul McCartney wrote Yesterday his first thought was ‘how do I record this’ and not ‘how do I stop someone stealing this’,” said Martin, who was the music supervisor on the documentary series The Beatles: Get Back and co-produced the “last” Beatles song Now and Then.Kidron said the letter’s signatories were speaking out “to ensure a positive future for the next generation of creators and innovators”.
Supporters of the Kidron amendment claim the change will ensure creatives are compensated for the use of their work in training AI models via licensing deals.Generative AI models, the term for technology that underpins powerful tools such as the ChatGPT chatbot or the Suno music-making tool, have to be trained on a vast amount of data in order to generate their responses.The main source of this information is online, including the contents of Wikipedia, YouTube, newspaper articles and online book archives.The government has submitted one amendment to the data bill that commits to officials carrying out an economic impact assessment of its proposals.A source close to Peter Kyle, the technology secretary, has told the Guardian that an opt-out system was no longer his preferred option.
Officially, there are four options under consideration.The other three alongside the “opt-out” scenario are: to leave the situation unchanged; require AI companies to seek licences for using copyrighted work; and allow AI firms to use copyrighted work with no opt-out for creative companies and individuals.A government spokesperson said: “Uncertainty over how our copyright framework operates is holding back growth for our AI and creative industries.That cannot continue, but we’re clear that no changes will be considered unless we are completely satisfied they work for creators.”
Tech giants beat quarterly expectations as Trump’s tariffs hit the sector
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, and this week in tech news: Trump’s tariffs hit tech companies that move physical goods more than their digital-only counterparts. Two stories about AI’s effect on the labor market paint a murky picture. Meta released a standalone AI app, a product it claims already has a billion users through enforced omnipresence. OpenAI dialed back an obsequious version of ChatGPT
Pro-Russian hackers claim to have targeted several UK websites
A pro-Russian hacking group has claimed to have successfully targeted a range of UK websites, including local councils and the Association for Police and Crime Commissioners, during a three-day campaign.In a series of social media posts, the group calling itself NoName057(16) suggested it had made a number of websites temporarily inaccessible, although it is understood the attacks were not wholly successful.The hackers sought to flood a range of websites with internet traffic in what is known as a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack. The group wrote on X: “Britain is invested in the escalation of the [Ukraine] conflict, and we are disconnecting its resources.”Its success was limited, however, with councils in Blackburn and Darwen and Exeter among those reporting that their websites were unaffected despite the hacking group’s claims of success
‘It cannot provide nuance’: UK experts warn AI therapy chatbots are not safe
Having an issue with your romantic relationship? Need to talk through something? Mark Zuckerberg has a solution for that: a chatbot. Meta’s chief executive believes everyone should have a therapist and if they don’t – artificial intelligence can do that job.“I personally have the belief that everyone should probably have a therapist,” he said last week. “It’s like someone they can just talk to throughout the day, or not necessarily throughout the day, but about whatever issues they’re worried about and for people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI.”The Guardian spoke to mental health clinicians who expressed concern about AI’s emerging role as a digital therapist
Amazon makes ‘fundamental leap forward in robotics’ with device having sense of touch
Amazon said it has made a “fundamental leap forward in robotics” after developing a robot with a sense of touch that will be capable of grabbing about three-quarters of the items in its vast warehouses.Vulcan – which launches at the US firm’s “Delivering the Future” event in Dortmund, Germany, on Wednesday and is to be deployed around the world in the next few years – is designed to help humans sort items for storage and then prepare them for delivery as the latest in a suite of robots which have an ever-growing role in the online retailer’s extensive operation.Aaron Parness, Amazon’s director of robotics, described Vulcan as a “fundamental leap forward in robotics. It’s not just seeing the world, it’s feeling it, enabling capabilities that were impossible for Amazon robots until now.”The robots will be able to identify objects by touch using AI to work out what they can and can’t handle and figuring out how best to pick them up
‘The crux of all evil’: what happened to the first city that tried to ban smartphones for under-14s?
At 3.12pm on a sunny spring afternoon in St Albans, Yasser Afghen reaches for the iPhone in his jeans pocket, hoping to use the three minutes before his son emerges from his year 1 primary class to scroll through his emails. As he lifts the phone to his face, Matthew Tavender, the head teacher of Cunningham Hill school, strides across the playground towards him. Afghen smiles apologetically, puts his phone away, and spends the remaining waiting time listening to the birdsong in the trees behind the school yard.A one-storey 1960s block with 14 classrooms backing on to a playing field, Cunningham Hill primary feels like an unlikely hub for a revolution
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Over the past few years Mark Zuckerberg has been conducting a very expensive experiment. If he grows his hair and revamps his wardrobe, will it make him seem more relatable? If he takes up mixed martial arts, goes wild boar hunting, and tells manosphere-adjacent podcasters such as Joe Rogan that companies need more “masculine energy”, will red-blooded American males respect him? With the help of a small army of stylists, personal trainers and PR gurus, could Zuck transform himself from an unlikable dork into an alpha bro?For a brief moment, the answer to all that seemed to be a tentative “yes”. Zuck’s shock of shaggy new hair made the billionaire seem less like three Lego figures in a trenchcoat and more like an adult human male. His gold chains and jazzy new outfits sparked excited chatter of a “Zucknaissance”. The Meta billionaire also had a lucky break, PR-wise, in 2023 when Elon Musk, the world’s least self-aware man, challenged him to a cage brawl
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