Art vs AI: artists’ uprising takes on the bots

Artificial Intelligence (AI) performs impressively, but much of it is based on human work that was taken without payment. The government thinks this is fine. Copyright holders beg to differ

Paul McCartney performs "Medley"
(Image credit: Todd Owyoung/NBC via Getty Images)

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) is already capable of impressive feats, but it requires a constant diet of human-generated content to grow its capabilities. Much of that content has been scraped from the web without the consent (or indeed knowledge) of its original creators.

Developers typically argue that “fair use” exemptions (allowing the use of copyrighted material, typically excerpts under specific conditions) should apply to what they do. Publishers, music companies and authors bitterly disagree – while legal systems and governments are racing to catch up. For the UK government, the dilemma is that it desperately wants this country to attract AI companies to scale up and drive economic growth. But it also needs to protect Britain’s world-class and highly tax-generative creative industries.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.