Artificial Intelligence: Intellectual Property Rights

Laurence Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

The debate can technically run until 6.04 pm.

[Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential impact of artificial intelligence on intellectual property rights for creative workers.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am delighted to have secured a debate on such an important and dynamic topic.

The rapid rise of artificial intelligence seemingly knows no bounds. Each week, a new AI tool is launched that drives further change across business, science, the arts and everyday life. When I applied for the debate, no one had heard of ChatGPT, but now it is writing speeches for the Chancellor. AI can undoubtedly bring significant advancements across a variety of fields, from aiding medical diagnoses to predicting environmental disasters. AI is transformative. It goes further and faster than humanly possible. Quite rightly, it has been identified as one of the UK’s key growth industries, and it is vital that Government policy supports digital innovation to position the UK as a world leader in this field.

But just as AI brings many benefits, it also carries significant risk. AI is rapidly permeating the creative sector, creating visual art, prose, music and film at a pace and cost that humans are unable to match. For creatives, the risk of AI-generated material flooding the market gives rise to significant regulatory and ethical challenges, but these can be overcome, or at least mitigated, with well thought out and considered policy that balances the legitimate concerns of creatives with the need to foster digital innovation. I am therefore pleased to bring this debate to Parliament to discuss those challenges on the record and to give a voice to the millions of creative workers across the UK whose careers will be impacted by AI.

We have all seen how quickly AI can redefine industry norms. We must start exploring how we balance our digital and creative future. What is the outlook for our musicians, journalists, visual artists, publishers and performers in an increasingly computer-powered world? With the help of the Chamber Engagement Team, I conducted a survey of over 200 creative workers to hear how AI was impacting their work. Many said that their work, which they own the copyright for, had been used without their consent by AI companies. One respondent, Richard, noted that, in recent weeks, almost 600 of his copyrighted images had been scraped off the internet to train AI platforms, for which he has not received a single penny. Another survey respondent, Henry, said:

“Why should an AI company be able to blatantly copy and capture the ‘essence’ of how I compose music and monetise it, for free?”

This bypassing of copyright has resulted in creatives feeling that AI is undermining their skills and devaluing the creative process, as well as having a detrimental impact on their income.

The respondents to my survey are not alone. A significant volume of active legal battles regarding AI and intellectual property is currently going through the courts. Intellectual property rights and copyright laws are fundamental to the success of the UK’s world-leading creative industries. They not only protect the integrity of original work, but provide a revenue stream to ensure that creatives can make a living from their work. Copyright therefore has both an economic and a moral importance for creatives. But rather than looking to ensure current protections are upheld and enforced, last June, the Intellectual Property Office published proposals for an all-out exception to copyright for text and data mining in order to promote AI, with no opt-out for rights holders.

Under these proposals, companies across the world would be able to use UK creatives’ material to produce clean, new material that they could sell and even obtain copyright for without having to gain permission from the creator or pay for a licence. This would see a huge transfer of value from individual creatives to tech companies and strip creatives of the opportunity to refuse or grant permission for the use of their work by AI companies, placing thousands of jobs within the creative sector under threat.

These proposals to dramatically widen the text and data mining exception have been met with staunch resistance from the creative community, which has emphasised not only their economic harm but the damage that the erosion of intellectual property rights will do to industry as a whole by stunting future creativity. UK Music has referred to the text and data mining exception as “music laundering”. Equity, the trade union, has said that the proposal

“could be a huge assault on the property rights of performers.”

The Publishers Content Forum has said that the proposals would disincentivise further investment in high quality data. The Design and Artists Copyright Society, which represents visual artists, has warned that

“this change will have far-reaching detrimental consequences”.

It has urged the Government to

“look again at how the policy objectives”

of supporting AI-driven technologies

“can be better met without undermining creators’ rights.”

After hearing evidence from some of those groups and many others, the Lords Communications and Digital Committee found that the IPO’s text and data mining proposals were “misguided” and advised that they be dropped “immediately”. I was therefore encouraged yesterday to hear the Minister of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez), tell the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee that she was “pretty confident” that the text and data mining exception would not be going ahead as proposed last summer.

As the Intellectual Property Office falls within the remit of the Minister responding to the debate, I am hopeful that he will confirm that the Government will not proceed with the all-out exception to copyright. That news would be welcomed across the creative sector, but a number of questions remain to be answered. Why were the proposals ever signed off? Who asked for them? What issue were they trying to solve? On what basis was it deemed necessary to adopt such a broadbrush approach? What evidence is there that the copyright exception will benefit the UK economy in general and the promotion of AI specifically?

If the proposals are indeed not proceeding as originally intended, how will the Government ensure that stakeholders are thoroughly consulted on alternative proposals to avoid a repeat of last summer? How will Parliament be consulted to ensure that the correct balance between promoting our creative sector and developing AI can be achieved? Both sectors are strategically important to the UK.

Many of the creative workers who responded to my survey expressed a clear desire for robust enforcement of current copyright protections, with any form of open access text and data mining arrangement offered on an opt-in basis for creatives. One respondent, Ian, said:

“If musicians and composers wish to sell their rights to software companies to train their systems then that is their right, but the default should be that it is illegal to use any music without permission, and it must be enforced robustly.”

There does not seem to be a shortage of free data online. Google has this week revealed a new AI tool that is able to generate music from a short textual description using only work that is not protected by copyright. Other survey respondents advocated stricter rules relating to copyright infringement and tougher legislation to improve copyright protection of individuals and companies.

What is the solution? How do we balance the legitimate concerns of rights holders with the need to foster an environment that stimulates innovation in AI? The answer cannot simply be plucked out of thin air. It needs to be worked out in detail after careful discussion between Government, officials and stakeholders from across the full breadth of the creative sector.

The creative industry, like all sectors, will have to adapt to accommodate AI, but the industry is capable of and already making progress with that. Creatives have largely accepted that AI-generated content will have its place in the market, and they are already using AI to enhance their work by driving efficiencies and extending their reach to new markets. It also gives rise to a number of new licensing opportunities to generate value for creatives. However, a solid regulatory framework is essential to protect their rights and ensure that they can take part in value creation and retain control over their work.

My team and I have spoken to a number of bodies across the creative sector, whom I thank for sharing their insights. It is clear that the passion that drives our creative industries is still well and truly alive. That is not to say that the creative industries will not face challenges from technological advancements. AI can operate faster and more efficiently than humans, but it will never be able to draw on the lived experience of humans.

The arts bind us together as a society. They create a collective identity and a shared cultural experience. The connection drawn between reader and author, listener and songwriter, and artist and viewer cannot be replaced by a robot. The value, beauty and joy of the arts is that they reflect the human experience. How sterile and lonely our lives would be if human life were only to be captured on servers and in pixels. How deprived we would be if algorithms served us up only what they thought we wanted to hear and see and we no longer had the opportunity to encounter something completely different.

We must also remember that creators are individuals who often dedicate their lives to their craft. History teaches us that as manual workers are replaced by machines, skills atrophy as demand for them falls. People work hard to develop a skill because they hope to earn a living from it. If the economy no longer demands skills in the creative sector, they will start to decline.

Amy, a composer who responded to my survey, said:

“We train for many years, often at our own expense, to develop and hone our skills in order to share our music. Yet with every week that goes by, we see our music being devalued at every turn. We should be embracing musicians, composers and artists, not trampling over them with the click of a button.”

If creative industries no longer present a viable career option, we risk deterring future entrants to the sector and depriving future generations of creative skills. Another survey respondent, Oliver, noted:

“AI threatens having a creative industry that continues to breed and create new ideas.”

We must embrace, rather than resist, AI developments. Unleashing innovation in AI is central to economic growth, but that objective cannot be pursued at the expense of creatives. We cannot let AI replace the human creators who have built our world-leading creative industry, nor can AI content be produced off the backs of hard-working creatives without their consent. I urge the Minister to confirm that the Government will not proceed with the text and data mining exception proposed last summer, and I would welcome his assurance that all relevant stakeholders will be properly consulted in the development of alternative proposals to balance the needs of our creative and digital economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I am mindful of the need for the wind-ups to take place, so I will try to be brief.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) on introducing the debate and rightly stressing that there is a balance to be struck. AI will bring huge benefits to our society and to the cultural sector—indeed, the sector has been using it for many years—but it needs to have rules. We cannot have an ideological move towards tearing up rules with a deregulation agenda. Every industry needs regulations, whether they are electricity regulations or financial regulations. They benefit not only consumers and, obviously, the workforce, but companies, which get a degree of certainty about the areas in which they operate.

Colleagues have looked at some of the technical aspects and some of the specific effects on the industry. I want to put the issue in a slightly broader context. The music industry, which has rightly drawn attention to a number of the difficulties here, is one of the wider cultural industries in this country. It forms an enormously powerful ecosystem that is important not just in and of itself, and not just because of its economic benefits, but because of its wider societal benefits. It is one of the things—it is certainly not our weather—that makes the UK an attractive place to visit and work, not necessarily just in the cultural industries, but particularly in industries with more mobile international talent. Where are those people going to work? Would they rather work in Frankfurt or in London, Manchester or Edinburgh? These are very important considerations for the UK more widely.

This is not just about the technical side; the creatives are the key. Why did Disney recently change its chief executive? Because it felt that it was getting out of touch with its creative talent. Rupert Murdoch, a practitioner of realpolitik if ever there was one, famously said that “content is king”. By bringing those things together, we form a creative ecosystem that feeds on itself. That is why so many film companies are coming to the UK— because they are able to call on such a wide range of talent. It would be extremely unwise of us to create a deregulated sector, causing those considering where they should locate to ask, “Is my content safe there? Are there other jurisdictions where it would be better protected?” Those are the sorts of issues that we need to be discussing and focusing on.

We should also recognise that, as the hon. Member for Richmond Park said, it is not just those at the top. Key to the Planning (Agent of Change) Bill, which I introduced, was that nobody started by playing the O2; they started off in small venues and they built up. But people need to be able to sustain themselves. They need to be able to get an income so that they can move from playing part-time in the pub at the weekend to become semi-professional musicians, failing sometimes but then coming back. Not everyone makes it, and others decide it is not for them, but there are those who come through, which is why we had support from so many major stars for that campaign.

I urge the Minister to see that this is important not just for audiences or performers, but for the country. We see adverts at airports about “GREAT” Britain. One of the things that makes us great is our creative sector, across the board. We should be very careful about undermining what has been, for several centuries, one of its fundamental protections: the ability to protect one’s creative content, in order to benefit financially but also to have control over how it is used and to prevent it from being misused.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

We now come to the Front-Bench speeches. I call John Nicolson, who has five minutes.