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the writer is a novelist
In 1989 we bought a small house in the shadow of the medieval walls of Carcassonne. It was the beginning of my love affair with Languedoc: its history, its mysterious mysteries hidden in its landscapes, its endless blue skies, and the light on the mountains at dusk. This work inspired my first historical adventure novel, Labyrinth, which has since been translated into 38 languages and sold in over 40 countries. Thanks to the worldwide success of this work, I was able to quit my day job and become a full-time writer.
Hence, 15 years of dreaming, researching, planning, writing, rewriting, editing, visiting libraries and archives, translating Occitan texts, locating original documents from the 13th century, and becoming a Catalism expert. Imagine my dismay at discovering that it was clearly significant. It doesn’t make any sense. Labyrinth is just one of my novels that has been scraped by Meta’s extensive language model. This was done without my consent, without compensation, and without even notice. This is theft.
I’m excited about artificial intelligence and its possibilities. Using technology to enhance, develop, experiment, and innovate is part of an artist’s toolkit. We need time to create, and potentially AI will give us the space to do what we love. But intellectual property theft is an attack on creativity and copyright, undermining Britain’s world-leading creative economy. It’s time to unite and act.
This month has been a busy month for AI in Congress. On December 3, the Author License Collection Association released its report, “Brave New World?” At a meeting of the all-party parliamentary press group. The survey, which surveyed nearly 13,500 authors’ attitudes toward AI, threw a grenade into the one-sided debate about illegal scraping and crawling of authors’ work, and the misconceptions surrounding it.
On 9 December, Baroness Bevan Kidron convened creators to discuss three amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill currently going through Parliament. This will enable enforcement of UK copyright law in the era of generative AI.
This comes ahead of a government consultation on how to boost trust across sectors so that AI developers provide clarity to rights holders about how their material is being used. So far, so good. However, when the consultation framework is revealed, it will be used in the name of ‘progress’ by suggesting that creators and rights holders need to ‘opt out’ of having their work published. It has been revealed that this is an attempt to fatally weaken UK copyright law. Used for training AI.
When the House of Lords debated the Kidron Amendment this week, Lords were unanimous in their disdain for the government’s plans, with Kidron saying: “The government has sold the creative industries down to the river.”
AI companies describe creators as opposed to change. it’s not. Every artist I know is already working with AI in some way. But we need to distinguish between AI, which can be used in great ways such as medical diagnosis, and the basis of AI models, where companies are essentially stealing the work of their creators for their own profit. It’s important to remember that AI companies rely on creators to build their models. Without strong copyright laws to ensure creators can earn a living, AI companies will lack high-quality materials essential for future growth.
The UK has one of the world’s most prosperous, innovative and profitable creative industries, worth around £108 billion a year. The publishing industry alone contributes £11 billion each year and is likely to grow by a further £5.6 billion over the next 10 years. It supports 84,000 jobs, is a world leader in publishing exports, and is expected to grow by 20% by 2033. In the film industry, 70% of the top 20 box office grossing films in 2023 were based on books.
One reason for this global success is strong and fair copyright laws. Britain was a pioneer in these. The Act of Anne, passed in 1710, was designed to encourage learning and support the book trade, create a framework in which authors who created their works retained full rights, and publishers could publish books without permission or payment. It was made illegal to copy works.
This strong and fair system will be undermined if the government pursues an opt-out, or new terminology, “reservation of rights” rather than an opt-in model. Why should we writers take on the burden of preventing AI companies from stealing our work? approach and we make a deal. Although the technology is new and developing, the principles are the same. AI is no exception. It’s not just a question of fairness or illegality, it’s also a question of economic growth. If creators had to spend time tracking down AI companies to prevent our work from being scraped, we would have less time to work. This, in turn, will undermine the world’s leading creative industries and damage their growth.
I fully support the Government’s determination to harness the future and become a world leader in AI innovation. More than 60 years ago, at the 1963 Labor Party conference, Harold Wilson spoke of the “white heat of the technological revolution” and the “aviation university.” This Labor government is following in these progressive footsteps. But diluting copyright is not the way to do it. Putting the burden of opting out on authors and other creators is not the right approach. Without original work, we have nothing.
