‘News reporting must not be gobbled up by greedy tech’, NMC CEO
An unprecedented campaign across the creative industry is putting pressure on the UK government to avoid policy giving AI companies free access to valuable news and artistic content.
Hundreds of newspapers in the UK and their websites adapted front pages to carry the campaign message that the government must ‘Make it Fair’ by maintaining the copyright regime, forcing AI companies to be transparent about when content has been scraped and exploited so that journalists, musicians, authors and other artists are paid for their hard work.
The government says it wants to achieve a balance between the needs of AI firms to have access to massive amounts of content to develop and feed their AI products and the risk of the creative industry eco-system collapsing.
Other campaign action has included a thousand 1,000 musicians creating a ‘silent’ album to protest the British government’s plan to let tech firms use their work for free. Stars including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn, Billy Ocean and former members of The Clash are among those who have collaborated. The album is titled Is This What We Want and features tracks of ambient background noise from empty studios across the country.
The News Media Coalition – whose members include news agencies in the UK and abroad and news publishers – will today (February 25th) make a submission to the government’s consultation on Copyright and AI which favours giving AI firms an exception to access and use copyright content – unless creative companies and individuals find a future technical means of blocking access.
The CEO of the News Media Coalition (NMC), Andrew Moger said in a statement: ‘The impact of getting this wrong are massive for the everyday and professional newsgathering, in particular. First hand reporting, whether text, photographs or video journalism, what we call Primary Source Journalism, is hard to get, often created under difficult circumstances or within restricted environments, subject to court orders and always in line with industry codes of practice.’
‘It has a special, distinctive and un-substitutable contribution to the cultural and informed lives of citizens – as the raw material of daily knowledge, of social change and of historic happenings.’
‘It can take weeks if not months of effort and planning for a newsgatherer to be in the right place to capture the moment or to secure the key fact. Conversely, in a live news environment, a journalist will draw upon years of experience and training to break trustworthy news first.”News reporting must not be gobbled up by greedy tech, but must be respected and rewarded,’ Moger said.
Owen Meredith, CEO of News Media Association, said: “We already have gold-standard copyright laws in the UK. They have underpinned growth and job creation in the creative economy across the UK – supporting some of the world’s greatest creators – artists, authors, journalists, scriptwriters, singers and songwriters to name but a few.
“And 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.
“There will be no AI innovation without the high-quality content that is the essential fuel for AI models. We’re appealing to the great British public to get behind our ‘Make it Fair’ campaign and call on the government to guarantee creatives are able to secure proper financial reward from AI firms to ensure a sustainable future for both AI and the creative industries.”
Content businesses such as news agencies and publisher syndication departments play a vital yet largely hidden role in the flow of editorial reports, photos and video journalism from the news front line to news consumer. In fact news agencies, publishers, freelancers, TV outlets and news websites have are part of a inter-dependent ecosystem stretching back generations. PA Media originates from 1870 and Reuters from 1850.
Getty Images, also an NMC Member was launched in 1995 and Craig Peters, its CEO, has said: ‘A world where artists cannot invest in and be rewarded for their work is a world with less creativity and fewer people able to make a living in their trade.’
‘That is not a compelling future,’ he told Fortune magazine, adding that Getty fully backed an earlier campaign, which now attracts nearly 50,000 signatories, stating: ‘The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.’
In support of the campaign to defend Primary Source Journalism in particular the NMC home page was redesigned around this bold statement
