The Artificial Intelligence (AI) sector is highly dependent on high-quality creative content produced by the dynamic creative industries in the U.K. for its high-performing AI models and applications. For both these sectors to thrive, they must work in collaboration and not in competition with each other. The U.K. government must enable this by protecting and supporting both sectors and not advance one sector at the expense of the other. Particularly, since the creative industries contribute hugely to the rich cultural heritage of the U.K. in addition to their enormous economic input (over £123 billion).
AI is revolutionizing the creative industries, reshaping how art, music, film, theatre, and design are produced, distributed, and consumed. While AI offers unprecedented opportunities for innovation and efficiency, it also raises ethical, economic, and philosophical questions about creativity, authorship, and the future of human artists. For example, generative AI tools such as DALL-E can be used to create images, illustrations, and concept art from text prompts. Whilst use cases such as this can lead to the democratization of creativity by allowing non-experts to produce high-quality work. On the other hand, it leads to issues of copyright and ownership, and loss of precious revenue for the creative industries as it raises questions such as: who owns AI generated content, the user, the AI developer or the AI itself?
This growing public concern over the use of copyrighted material in training generative AI models was demonstrated in the over 11,500 responses that were submitted to the U.K. government’s consultation on AI and copyright. As well as highlighting the need for a more balanced approach to AI and copyright regulation in the U.K. Also, there is the additional issue of sovereign AI infrastructure that cannot be compromised for the U.K. to maintain its data and AI sovereignty, particularly in relation to security and defence.
To foster responsible AI practices and innovation, AI companies must respect copyright law to enable creatives to continue to contribute to the diverse creative ecosystem in the U.K. The UK government must allow this to happen for the sake of the long-term growth and sustainability of both these industries. AI and frontier technologies must be utilised for the benefit of humanity and not to cause harm to the public. This is only possible within a coherent, fair, transparent, balanced, principles-based, innovation-friendly and responsible AI regulatory framework that charts a middle-path between the US and the EU, and incorporates respect for both copyright law and data privacy regulation.
A decision on this matter by the U.K. government will have global impact as it could seize this historic opportunity to learn from the challenges of the stringent EU AI Act and the US’s “wild west” approach to AI regulation by implementing its own unique solution as proposed above. This can help to position the U.K. as the global leader in responsible AI as well as provide a haven for responsible AI companies of the future as global chaos will lead to a “trust deficit.” The U.K. could then become the “trusted” source and supplier of responsible AI and a leading creative hub globally. The U.K. is at a crossroads – will it choose to be a global leader or a compromised follower?
