Japan and Singapore are already introducing copyright exceptions along similar lines to those being discussed in the UK.
This comes at a time when governments around the world and international organisations such as the World Intellectual Property Organization are considering how laws need to adapt to AI. It mentions risks to things like mental health, privacy rights and human rights, but not any threats to intellectual property (IP). The white paper wants to prioritise making the UK a tech-friendly environment, emphasising “the role of regulation in creating the environment for AI to flourish”. In March, however, it published a white paper, A Pro-Innovation Approach to AI Regulation, which raised the prospect that it might be reviving its previous approach. The government did then appear to backtrack in February, with science minister George Freeman saying it would not take the exception forward. The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee said the proposal is “misguided” and should be scrapped. The proposed exception met with widespread objections, with only 13 out of 88 responses to the consultation in favour. In my view, the UK proposal doesn’t meet any of these steps and would be contrary to international law. It must be for very specific special circumstances, must not interfere with the normal exploitation of the work and must not unreasonably prejudice the rightsholder. When governments want to create a new exception, they must follow three requirements set out in the Berne convention. There are already copyright exceptions in the UK where permission for reuse is unnecessary, such as “ criticism, review or quotation”, though there are limitations to make sure this is done fairly.
This would also apply to other artistic works like videos and photographs. A few months ago, it floated the idea of making an exception for the first type of infringement: using music catalogues as training data. Unfortunately for the music industry, the UK government has been muddying the waters with proposals to change the copyright rules to benefit tech companies. If the streaming platforms were seen to have facilitated such illegal activity, they could be found guilty of secondary copyright infringement, comparable to an illegal downloading platform like The Pirate Bay. If AI programmes are using labels’ music catalogues without permission, they could be seen to have infringed music rights in at least two ways: by using the music to train the AIs, and in copying parts of the music that the AI produces from the training data. The same is true of everyone from bars, cafes and pubs playing records for their customers to artists sampling someone else’s song in their new track. For example, Spotify pays a licence to record labels and artists to put music on its platform. This ensures that rightsholders and creators are paid properly for their creativity. Music is protected by copyright law, which means that anyone wanting to use a song has to pay a licence. Mubert even emphasises that its audio material is made “from real musicians and producers”, recognising that the value in the music is coming from human creators. It is unclear how that squares with not paying human creators royalties for the use of their music. Mubert claims to be “on a global mission to empower creators”. You can also generate music that sounds like a particular artist, and whatever tracks you create are downloadable. Tell it to play a “fast voodoo rhythm in the style of a nursery rhyme with some pretty electronics”, and it will copy parts of songs that correspond and generate music to match.
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On a “royalty free music generator” like Mubert, it’s already possible to type in a prompt and the programme will use AI to search a catalogue of music for patterns. So what’s going on? AI music and copyright In particular, the UK government is threatening to water down copyright laws to benefit tech companies at the expense of not only the music industry but also creative businesses like literature, films and photography. Behind these efforts to enforce copyright, the big worry is about how governments will balance the rights of AIs against human creativity. It is the latest move in the music industry’s growing battle to prevent AIs from using its songs without licensing them. The label, which controls about a third of the recorded music industry, has also been issuing substantial numbers of takedown requests in relation to AI uploads appearing online.
Universal Music Group has been asking music streaming services like Spotify to stop developers from scraping its material to train AI bots to make new songs.
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