Almost every UK daily newspaper title gave over its print front and website home pages to a campaign against government proposals to create a copyright exemption for artificial intelligence companies.
The “Make it Fair” front pages coincide with the final day of a government consultation into the proposal, which would automatically allow AI businesses like OpenAI to ingest UK creators’ content until those creators explicitly opt out.
The cover wraps, which have appeared on both national and regional titles, argue the government “is looking to change the law to favour big tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without our permission or payment”.
They also feature a QR code leading to the News Media Association’s website and a portal through which people can write to their MP about the changes.
The NMA said the campaign was developed “to raise awareness among the British public about the existential threat posed to the creative industries from generative AI models”.
“The impact on creative businesses and individuals throughout the country – who collectively generate over £120bn a year towards the UK economy – will be devastating if this continues unchecked, or worse still if the government legitimises this content theft.”
Publishers argue it would be impractical, and place the burden on the wrong party, for them to have to contact each AI company to opt out from content scraping.
The campaign has been coordinated in tandem with a similar push from the music industry. More than 1,000 musicians, among them Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and composer Hans Zimmer are listed as co-writers on an “album” released on Tuesday titled “Is This What We Want”, which is entirely silent.
Each of the twelve tracks of varying lengths on the album has a different one-word title, which together form the sentence: “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies.” The album can be streamed on major music platforms.
NMA chief executive Owen Meredith said: “We already have gold-standard copyright laws in the UK… for a healthy democratic society, copyright is fundamental to publishers’ ability to invest in trusted quality journalism.
“The only thing which needs affirming is that these laws also apply to AI, and transparency requirements should be introduced to allow creators to understand when their content is being used.
“Instead, the government proposes to weaken the law and essentially make it legal to steal content.”
Broadcast reported today that a group of television industry stakeholders including the BBC, ITN, Sky and Channel 4 have also made a collective representation to the consultation arguing against the opt-out proposals.
What have the newspapers said about the Government’s AI proposals and the ‘Make It Fair’ campaign?
The covers are accompanied by ad takeovers on several leading publishers’ websites and numerous editorials and opinion articles.
The Sun, for example, claimed in a headline that Britain’s creative sector “will die if AI firms’ supercomputers are allowed to use any material they want”.
In an editorial, it wrote: “Strong British copyright laws should send an automatic ‘hands-off’ message to internet-age magpies – backed up by enforceable punishments.
“But instead the Government wants to hand exemptions to AI firms allowing their supercomputers to use any material it wants – unless the original creator ‘opts out’ for every piece of content made.
“Such weak and impractical protection is the equivalent of leaving a handwritten note for the Hatton Garden heist gang asking if they wouldn’t mind leaving the gold alone.”
The i Paper editor Oli Duff wrote to readers that it was “disingenuous” for the Government to claim there was uncertainty around existing UK copyright law and AI, and said the “unlikely alliances” on display on Tuesday’s newsstands illustrated “the scale of the threat”.
“The law is clear. Text and data mining – the scraping of content used to train and feed generative AI models – is unlawful for commercial purposes without a licence.
“Some of these tech firms have mind-boggling profit margins. Asking them to take a little less need not hinder tech investment. Licensing is a moral and legal obligation.”
The i’s media columnist Ian Burrell also wrote that the move risks “hurting the golden goose of the UK’s creative sectors, which generate more than 125bn a year for the economy and support 2.4 million jobs…
“Labour must decide whether it bends the knee to big tech.”
The Independent, which no longer publishes a print edition but which gave over its homepage to the Make It Fair campaign, argued that if there were “a predatory threat to a British chemical works, a major car factory or a large bank then the government would at least consider the case for financial support….
“The government, and particularly one committed to revolutionising Britain’s growth potential, would certainly not legislate to make it easier for all the individuals, communities, and companies involved in the sector to be robbed of their livelihoods.”
The Guardian claimed the Government’s consultation “is framed in terms that are far too favourable to big tech”.
“Ministers who have had their heads turned by the promise of new data centres and a seat at the AI table should reconsider their priorities and obligations. Big tech should have no more rights over the work of others than anybody else.”
The paper also carried an opinion piece by father and son Andrew Lloyd and Alastair Webber, who wrote that the plans were “extraordinary”: “Labour claims to represent working people. Creative artists are working people, and their work is of untold value economically, socially and, of course, culturally.”
Mail Online referred to the proposals as “Big Tech’s great brain robbery”, alleging an opt-out model would allow them to Hoover up any material published online – be it books, music or journalism – and train their machines without having to compensate those who laboured so hard to create it.
“This would be nothing less than theft – with them pocketing vast profits.”
The Times, similarly, argued the opt-out system would put intellectual property “in danger of being fatally undermined in a data Wild West in which the work of individuals and organisations is judged fair game by AI companies seeking to profit from it at no cost to themselves.”
“Ensuring that data can be scraped to aid the NHS is a very different thing from ingesting all of Sting’s back catalogue or every Bridget Jones novel to create AI knock-offs.”
As well as an editorial backing the Make It Fair campaign, The Telegraph published an opinion piece written by Baroness Kidron, who last month proposed amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill which would explicitly subject AI companies to UK copyright law regardless of where in the world they are based. (The amendments were passed in the Lords but must now be voted on in the Commons.)
Kidron wrote in The Telegraph: “The Government set up AI and creative industries as adversaries and picked a winner.
“What should have been a collaboration between two sectors that if effectively and fairly managed could build Britain into a powerhouse, of both creativity and AI, has become a fight for survival for one party.
“But the Government declared too soon. It forgot that the creative industries is well named, and the action that we have seen today, is the start not the finish, and that action may well be heading for the courts to Make it Fair.”
Daily Mirror editor Caroline Waterston told her readers the proposal “is bad for journalism and it’s bad for you.
“A healthy media is an essential part of a fair and democratic society. We support positive technological change and we embrace innovation. But the law must protect what is most important and pave a responsible way forward.”
Thomas Hunt, the new editor of fellow Reach newspaper the Daily Express, wrote: “It is not often that I agree to give over the front page of our great newspaper for anything but the best news and picture stories to keep you fully informed.
“But today, along with our peers, we have decided to dedicate our front and page two to a cause designed to protect our industry and its readers.”
Daily Star editor Ben Rankin commented in a news story published by the title: “They want to train their AI tools with our stories – for free! We think that’s wrong and that the Government should back us to be paid.
“If they don’t (they’re currently trying to decide), your Daily Star faces an uncertain future and a world without us would be a much duller place, don’t you think?”
Several other regional Reach titles also protested the government copyright plans. The Manchester Evening News, for example, said they could be “disastrous”.
“For a news industry being squeezed by the BBC’s digital expansion on one side and the market dominance of Meta and Google on the other, giving the AI industry free access to exploit our intellectual property would be catastrophic.”
Numerous National World newspapers ran an article backing the Make It Fair campaign.
Metro, the UK’s largest-circulation newspaper, did not publish any opinion articles on the Government’s AI plans, but did run the Make It Fair advertising.
The Financial Times and specialist newspaper Racing Post appear to be two of the few newspapers not to have given their front page over to the campaign. However earlier this month the FT’s policy chief appeared in Parliament where he argued the proposals would be “a huge mistake” and that protecting publishers against copyright theft was “a question of right and wrong”.
[Read more: FT policy chief warns MPs watered-down copyright regime for AI is ‘huge mistake’]
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