The UK coalition Creators Rights Alliance is demanding generative artificial intelligence (AI) companies stop using their work or seek consent and pay them appropriately.
One of the most curious plotlines that continues to unspool as generative AI becomes increasingly commonplace is the ongoing indecision of Hollywood studios to act in the face of seemingly blatant copyright infringement.
These companies – usually so eager to resort to legal threats to protect their intellectual property – seem to be frozen, watching as large language models gobble up copyrighted material, doing nothing to even attempt to stem the tide.
We’ve seen a few creators come out against this large-scale apparent copyright theft, and now creators across the UK have spoken out in one voice to condemn the infringement of their copyrighted work, while demanding that measures are put in place to either stop future infringements or at the least recompense them for the use of their work.
The Creators’ Rights Alliance represents over half a million UK creatives and has issued a public letter (PDF) on behalf of its members. The long and short of it is a rejection of the ongoing huge-scale infringements that large language AI models depend on. In the letter, the CRA states: ‘the alliance, amongst other things, wants big tech firms to pay creatives for this use or seek consent, and flags that UK law does not allow copying for such purposes without the explicit consent of the creator.’
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The letter goes on to state that to ‘safeguard human creativity’, AI companies must agree to seven key terms which would also need to be retroactively enforced.
Few are expecting AI companies to suddenly begin complying with demands overnight, but the publicly-released letter is clearly the first move in a longer-term strategy spearheaded by creators to protect their rights.
The problem, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be an approach yet that combines the power of creators and media companies. Here in the UK we’ve seen firms like the BBC move to restrict access to its output, but it’s hardly the unified response that we’ve seen in the music industry where several of the largest names in the business are combining to sue the creators of AI software.
It’ll be interesting to see what the CRA’s next planned move is now that it has publicly declared its intentions to challenge the actions of large scale copyright misuse. When we hear more, we’ll let you know.
