UK Music welcomes MPs' call to prevent AI exploitation

UK Music Interim Chief Executive Tom Kiehl has welcomed a report from the UK Parliament's Culture Media and Sport Committee calling for action to ensure creators are compensated when their works are used by AI systems and for the government to do more to make sure music makers are paid fairly.

The report's authors say they are concerned that the status quo favours AI developers, given creators’ concerns that their IP is already being used in AI development without licence or any practical means of recourse.

They urge the UK government to ensure that creators have proper mechanisms to enforce their consent and receive fair compensation for use of their work by AI developers. They say it should set out measurable objectives for the period of engagement with the AI and rights holder sectors, and provide a definitive deadline at which it will step in with legislation in order to break any deadlock.

Responding to the report, Kiehl said: “This report provides welcome recommendations to government regarding artificial intelligence to ensure the creative sector is protected from some practices that amount to music laundering by certain firms.

“We need greater transparency from AI companies regarding the creative works they use to enable new music to be generated, as well as robust personality rights to support creators in face of huge technological development.”

The document follows a previous report from the CMS Committee on the impact of artificial intelligence and highlights the precarious rates of pay and employment conditions faced by many working in music and the wider creative industries.

UK Music has previously set out five principles for the development of regulation of AI and music. These are the UK music industry believes policymakers  should adopt five key principles:

Creators’ choice: The creator, or their chosen rights holder, should be able to decide if and how they want to use their creative talent. This certainty underpinned by legal rights (copyright) should not be undermined by any exception to copyright or compulsory licensing during the input stage. Users need to respect creator’s choice as baseline for any discussions.

Record keeping: It is important that in the input stage, the tech providers keep an auditable record of the music ingested before the algorithm generates new music.

Human creativity: Without human creativity there should be no copyright.

Labelling: Music generated by AI should be labelled as such.

Protection of personality rights: A new personality right should be created to protect the personality/image of songwriters and artists.

Read more about UK Music's views on AI

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