The UK government is considering whether tech companies should be allowed to train AI on copyrighted content. Campaigners keen to protect creatives’ and artists’ rights have expressed their opposition.

TechUK welcomed the discussion, proposing that tech firms should be exempt from copyright laws when training AI. If accepted, the proposal will allow Google, OpenAI and more to bypass current copyright laws. However, creatives will supposedly be allowed to “reserve their rights” and “opt-out” of AI training.

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MP Chris Bryant insists it will be a “win win” for both creatives and tech firms. “This is about giving greater control in a difficult and complex set of circumstances to creators and rights holders,” Bryant tells The Guardian. “We intend it to lead to more licensing of content, which is potentially a new revenue stream for creators.”

Despite Bryant’s positive outlook, the nature of AI training is already murky. Back in January, OpenAI told The Telegraph that it ‘complies’ with copyright laws – but it noted that “legally, copyright law does not forbid training.”

Furthermore, when the BBC blocked ChatGPT from using its content for training, OpenAI said that it would be “impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials.”

“Limiting training data to public domain books and drawings created more than a century ago might yield an interesting experiment,” the company explained in The Telegraph. “But it would not provide AI systems that meet the needs of today’s citizens.”

Creatives’ rights campaigner Beeban Kidron says she is “very disappointed” with the proposal. “The government is consulting on giving away the creativity and livelihoods of the UK creative sector,” she adds.

The news comes as British composer Ed Newton-Rex’s anti-AI statement has garnered over 37,000 signatures. Backed by Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, Kate Bush, The Smith’s Robert Smith and more, the Statement On AI Training asserts that “the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”

Paul McCartney also spoke out against AI just last week. The Beatles legend labelled the “mass copyright theft” of companies as a “very sad thing indeed.”

“We[’ve] got to be careful about it because it could just take over,” he reflects [as reported by The Guardian]. “We don’t want that to happen, particularly for the young composers and writers… If AI wipes that out, that would be a very sad thing indeed.”

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