Creative Industries

Allison Gardner Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)]

I rise not just as a member of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee or as co-chair of the APPG on artificial intelligence, but as an academic with first-hand experience of building AI models. I will try to make a case—go with me on this one—that protecting our creative industry and the high-quality output it produces is vital not just to our vibrant creative sector, but to our rapidly evolving AI sector.

Back in the mists of time, when I was building a model for my PhD, I resisted the temptation to build a large dataset from any relevant data I could find. Instead, I chose to produce a smaller, high-quality dataset, which was risky, as it might not have been enough to create a reliable model and I might not have passed my PhD. My risk paid off. My model worked better than expected and, ever since, I have adhered to the principle that it is the quality of our data, not its quantity, that matters.

To mangle a metaphor, some say that data is the new oil or gold. Taking that metaphor forward, let us do a thought experiment. Let us say that the UK discovered vast reserves of gold, making us the second biggest provider globally. What should we do? Would we look at gold-hungry organisations and give them the gold for free, in the hope that they will invest in the UK? I should hope not.

By some estimates, the UK creative industry is the second largest globally. It is our gold. Should we give away this valuable asset for free? I hope not, for the sake of our creatives, but also for our new AI industry, in which this Government are rightly investing. The unlicensed and illegal use of copyrighted content for generative AI development has been equated by some with a form of theft. Not only is it unfair to make such acquisition legal via an opt-out system, but it risks creating a future of fool’s gold data as our creative industry loses control of its work and moves elsewhere, or simply gives up.

High-quality data is essential for the success of generative AI, but, as with gold—to overkill the metaphor—its reserves may be finite. Researchers predict that at the current rate, generative AI developers will have used all the publicly available stock of human-created text data between 2026 and 2032. In other words, we could run out next year. This means that, with limited new high-quality data, innovation and AI growth will be hindered, inviting model collapse.

Model collapse happens when generative AI models start training on their own lower-quality data. This is the fool’s gold of AI. If we wish to be competitive, both in the creative and AI industries, we as a country need to set ourselves above our competitors, not below them. We do this not by giving away our most valuable assets for free, but by protecting them so that we can keep generating more and more new high-quality data.

Generative AI developers, like all AI developers, are extremely data-hungry and keen to mine, mine, mine. If all we have left to offer them is fool’s gold—if our world-class British artists have to look elsewhere to make a living—the AI developers will likewise look elsewhere. Protecting our creative industry by not allowing the free use of data for model training purposes is therefore the right thing to do not only for our creative industry, but for our AI industry.

I therefore ask the Government to consider a longer-term view and retain the UK’s current copyright framework, to place the onus on generative AI developers to seek a licence for our creatives’ data—with a possible caveat for academic research—and to expand it to cover all generative AI models marketed in the UK. In conjunction, we must require meaningful transparency on data usage in a form that is accessible to artists and regulators. That would allow for enforceable regulation and enable the actual data creators, our creatives, to seek redress. I resist, as I always do, claims that that would inhibit innovation and growth. Based on my experience as a researcher and AI ethicist, I reject the notion that regulation inhibits innovation. It simply does not. Transparency of model development and data sources plus enforceable regulations are vital to encourage high standards and good quality AI.

By retaining our copyright framework and pioneering a licensing approach, we would guarantee that rights holders have control over their own creative output. Such an approach would give confidence to our creatives, allowing them to pursue sustainable, well-paid and productive careers, and provide enjoyment to us all, income and growth for the country and the high-quality output that is so valuable to generative AI developers. By taking that approach, we will remain what we are today—the gold standard of the creative industries—and that will enable us to rise up as the gold standard for AI development.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

The Minister has stolen my thunder! As always, he has pre-empted what I was going to say. I was going to say that Stoke-on-Trent is a city that is steeped in history, but fizzing for the future of creativity. We are home to nine Arts Council England national portfolio organisations; we have a burgeoning CreaTech cluster in the Spode building; and we have some of the best performances of theatre-in-the-round at the New Vic theatre, which although not in Stoke-on-Trent is so close to the border it might as well be.

I highlight these points not for the flippant response I should have pre-empted from the Minister, but because all too often when we think about places where creativity happens and where arts and culture thrive, we do not think about places such as Stoke-on-Trent or other historical industrial cities. All too often, those places are written up as wastelands, with derelict buildings shown in articles in The Guardian, rather than the focus being on the things that make them special and strong: our heritage and our future.

Stoke-on-Trent is the only city in the UK that has world craft city status for our industrial history in the potteries. Some of the great creatives of our past are intrinsically linked to Stoke-on-Trent: Wedgwood, Spode, William Moorcroft, Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper. They are people who had creativity not only in their artistry, but in their industry. They pioneered new methods of working so that we could have the finest bone china, and came up with new techniques for design; the illustrations on the plates, cups and tiles that we all enjoy were at the cutting edge of new methods, technologies, pigments and materials. The creativity that they drew upon as part of their industrial heritage remains, and we have the same skills and burning ambition to demonstrate who we are and what we do in Stoke-on-Trent today.

Some 4,000 jobs in Stoke-on-Trent are linked directly to the creative sector; if the supply chain is included, it would easily be two or three times that number. Some 638 artists and artist organisations are recognised by the Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire Cultural Education Partnership. In 2019, there were 5.5 million tourist visits to Stoke-on-Trent—a narrative that we do not often hear from those who seek to denigrate the city I am proud to call home and represent in this place. Sadly, some of that snobbish approach to my city comes from our nearest neighbours, who seek to use the challenges that our city faces for their own short-term political gain. I doubt that will stop any time soon. However, we are home to “The Great Pottery Throw Down”, which is on Channel 4 on Sunday evenings; Keith Brymer Jones and the team have made pottery glamorous Sunday night TV viewing. It demonstrates that the history of who we are is still very much part of the society and city that we want to be.

[Dr Gardner]

I recently visited the impressive and very funky 1882 ceramics firm based in the World of Wedgwood in my Stoke-on-Trent South constituency, home of “The Great Pottery Throw Down”. The firm impressed upon me its challenges in attracting young apprentices, risking the loss of important creative heritage skills. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must remember the value of pottery and sculpture in our education curriculum review to protect this vibrant industry?

[Gareth Snell]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Our city has children in school who are unaware of our cultural heritage, which is their cultural heritage, and who do not play with clay in the way they should. We have schools that decommissioned their kilns, despite the fact that the children’s parents and grandparents would have trained in those schools, gone into the industry and made good lives for themselves from honest, hard work in what was essentially one of the country’s earliest creative industries.

My hon. Friend is also right about the pipeline of talent. The big creative companies in Stoke-on-Trent tell me that the University of Staffordshire is generating some of the highest quality, most talented graduates in the country. When it comes to computer games, technical productions and animations, the courses at the University of Staffordshire are rated as some of the best, if not the best, in the country. Only this week, three of the big digital creative bodies in Stoke-on-Trent—i-Creation, Lesniak Swann and VCCP—announced their new summer internship. That programme lines young graduates up with professionals working in the creative industry, and shows them what their job and career could be—a job and a career that has value, pride and potential economic benefits for my city, because of the nature of the work that we can bring in.

The Minister will know about the litany of success stories in our city from a Westminster Hall debate that he kindly responded to a few weeks ago. I will not bore the House by repeating that list this evening. Let me simply say that when the Government consider the future of the creative industries and where the talent pool should be—I know that the Minister agrees, so I hope that he reiterates it when he winds up—we should bear in mind that if we can make it work in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, we can make it work anywhere. Young people in my city who enjoy creative education and want to go on to do wonderful things, whether in music, drama, dance, tech or ceramics and pottery, deserve the same opportunities as a child from London or any metropolitan city in the north of England. I hope that, as the new Government foster a new partnership with places such as Stoke-on-Trent, the creative industries can be central to it, so that the names we speak of in 20 or 30 years’ time, when we undoubtedly have this debate again, will be the names of those young people.