Open letter to Andy Burnham: Ditch Labour’s disastrous stance on AI. This is important - if you’re in the UK and you care about creatives, I encourage you to sign it. openletter.earth/open-letter…

The UK government released its progress report on AI & copyright today. The good news for creatives is that the government formally dropped its preferred option of a broad copyright exception with an opt-out. This was unworkable and hugely unpopular. It's good that they've recognised this. The bad news is that weakening copyright law is very much still on the table. They haven't actually ruled out that hugely unpopular opt-out proposal, and they are explicit that they are still considering other forms of copyright exception too. We are obviously in a better position than we were eighteen months ago, when the government was clearly in the pocket of big tech and was actively proposing an extremely harmful policy. Credit should go to the many, many creatives who fought that proposal, and to the new leadership at DSIT for listening. But it's important not to see this as more of a win than it really is. The government is still considering weakening copyright law to favour AI companies, and those AI companies will continue to lobby very hard for them to do so. Until the government rules out weakening copyright law, people need to keep making their voices heard. Our work is not the government's to give away. Speaking up works. Read the report here: assets.publishing.service.go…

🚨 It looks like the UK government is gearing up to upend copyright law in favour of AI companies, legalising the theft of their work. This is despite creatives' huge protests, and despite previous proposals being roundly rejected by the public. There are rumours it is considering introducing a 'commercial research exception' for AI training. This would be disastrous. It would mean handing the life's work of British creatives to AI companies for free, to train their models on. In the House of Lords today, a government minister refused to rule this out. To be clear, this would amount to legalising theft. It would fly in the face of public opinion on what is fair, and would mean a surrender of British creatives' work by this Labour government. It would mean the lobbying by big US tech firms had succeeded, and the protests of the UK's creatives had been ignored. People's work is not the government's to give away. If you're in the UK and you care about creatives and the creative industries, please write to your MP!

Baroness Kidron in the House of Lords today on the extraordinary position of the UK government on AI training: "It is extraordinary that the Government’s decided, immovable and strongly held position is that enforcing the law to prevent the theft of UK citizens’ property is unfair to the sector doing the stealing."