John Dean – Crime Writer

The Society of Authors (SoA) has backed a Parliamentary report that calls for greater control of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to protect writers.

(SoA) officials have welcomed thirty eight recommendations made by the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, which include a call for the Government to make a clear public statement that commercial AI developers operating in the UK must obtain appropriate licences when using copyright-protected works, something that the SoA have long campaigned for.

The report also calls for stronger transparency requirements, statutory duties for major AI developers, and regulations that support rights-holders..

Baroness Keeley, Chair of the Communications and Digital Committee, said: “Our creative industries face a clear and present danger from uncredited and unremunerated use of copyrighted material to train AI models. Photographers, musicians, authors and publishers are seeing their work fed into AI models which then produce imitations that take employment and earning opportunities from the original creators.

“AI may contribute to our future economic growth, but the UK creative industries create jobs and economic value now. In 2023 the creative industries delivered £124 billion of economic value to the UK and this is set to grow to £141 billion by 2030. Watering down the protections in our existing copyright regime to lure the biggest US tech companies is a race to the bottom that does not serve UK interests. We should not sacrifice our creative industries for AI jam tomorrow.

Anna Ganley, who gave evidence to the Committee in November on behalf of the SoA, said: “We wholeheartedly agree with the Committee’s recommendations. It is a thorough examination of the issues informed by evidence from across the tech and creative sectors. Authors and creators cannot accept the current standstill from Government while their livelihoods disappear. Authors want fairness, transparency and licensing. Hesitancy from Government on this continues to leave the gate wide open for unscrupulous  theft of authors copyright-protected work for AI training.”