Rachel Hall, The Guardian; Prioritise artists over tech in AI copyright debate, MPs say
"Two cross-party committees of MPs have urged the government to prioritise ensuring that creators are fairly remunerated for their creative work over making it easy to train artificial intelligence models.
The MPs argued there needed to be more transparency around the vast amounts of data used to train generative AI models, and urged the government not to press ahead with plans to require creators to opt out of having their data used.
The government’s preferred solution to the tension between AI and copyright law is to allow AI companies to train the models on copyrighted work by giving them an exception for “text and data mining”, while giving creatives the opportunity to opt out through a “rights reservation” system.
The chair of the culture, media and sport committee, Caroline Dinenage, said there had been a “groundswell of concern from across the creative industries” in response to the proposals, which “illustrates the scale of the threat artists face from artificial intelligence pilfering the fruits of their hard-earned success without permission”.
She added that making creative works “fair game unless creators say so” was akin to “burglars being allowed into your house unless there’s a big sign on your front door expressly telling them that thievery isn’t allowed”."
