How weaker copyright protection for AI companies would “enshittify” the UK’s creative industry
We’re calling on the UK government to control Big Tech’s concentrated power to stop AI’s “enshittification” of creative industries.
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Last week, the UK government closed its consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence. The government proposes changes to copyright law, which they say would make it easier for AI companies to train models using copyrighted work without a licence. The proposal has received a massive backlash from artists. Balanced Economy Projects supports the musicians, journalists, authors and artists in this fight. We’re calling on the UK government to control Big Tech’s concentrated power to stop AI’s “enshittification” of creative industries.
A couple of years ago technology critic Cory Doctorow coined the term “enshittification” to describe the gradual degradation of online platforms and services over time. Doctorow describes enshittification as a process. It starts with Big Tech-dominated platforms engaging users with free access and exciting features. Platforms grow their user base, and once those users are locked-in, platforms focus on attracting businesses (advertisers, sellers, developers) to monetise those users. Ads are prioritised over real user satisfaction, and users’ data becomes a rich source for profits, reducing user privacy and trust.
Google search, Twitter/X, Facebook and Instagram platforms all show how promising technology can lose their appeal and value to users and businesses. They can use their market power to maximise profits by exploiting both users and businesses by increasing costs and reducing quality - overall eviscerating its public value. As Doctorow writes,
“We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralising. It’s even terrifying.”
Many of us will be familiar with the degradation of user experience on these platforms, and worryingly the detrimental impacts they have on well-being, mental health, business margins, even the state of democracy.
Copyright protection inhibits enshittification of creative work
The Big Tech-led AI industry now has its sights set on a new feeding ground for enshittification – the creative arts.
Current copyright law requires AI companies to get opt-in consent from the originator (license holder) before training on their works. An exception exists to allow limited copying for the purpose of research and private study, which is essential for knowledge building. However, the UK is proposing to grant exemptions for AI developers to train models on copyrighted works – including films, TV shows and audio works, as well as original journalism - for commercial purposes, unless rights holders expressly opt-out.
Polls show 95% of artists say training needs consent and payment for use. Smaller rights holders such as individual creators (the breeding ground for original content) are hardest hit by opt-out schemes. They are less likely to have the means seek an opt-out for their work.
In contrast, AI companies would benefit financially from the copyright exemption. The world’s biggest companies behind generative-AI are also world’s wealthiest companies (in terms of market capitalisation). These US-based companies - Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Meta (Facebook), Tesla and Oracle – have ample means to remunerate creatives and artists for copyright fees.
But their monopoly-based business models are based on extraction: This treasure trove of UK creative works would give a rich new source of data and content for value extraction. Tech PR expert, Ed Zitron, explains this brilliantly,
“Shareholder Supremacy is the force currently driving the tech ecosystem, one that as I’ve noted, currently lacks any remaining hyper-growth markets, and funding and proliferating technologies that exist not to provide a truly innovative service, but to create more growth, a phony sense of progress that allow companies like Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon to create something that looks sort of innovative, even if their models are all extremely similar, as they’re all trained on the same quickly dwindling training data.”
The UK exemption would allow AI firms to ‘scrape’ online content to draw out every extractable penny at the same time as stripping out the intangible value of the works’ integrity (including say their beauty, invention, or inspirational qualities) it that’s what it takes to make a profit. Besides the degradation of the original, which harms the creator, consumers, and the public at large, the AI-generated version can be used to compete with - or substitute for - an original creation in the same market. Thomson Reuters - the rights holder – recently won the first major copyright case in the US against a generative AI company on the basis that the AI firm - Ross Intelligence – couldn’t prove it was not developing a market substitute.
Ross Intelligence is however a small company, unlike the Big Tech companies that have big legal teams and the staying power to turn the screws on a legal and regulatory system until they have their way.
Tackle the root cause – concentrated power
The Balanced Economy Project supports the musicians, writers, journalists, and artists protesting this major threat to their art and livelihood. To stop the enshittification of anything that monopolies can exploit for profit, governments must tackle economic power concentration of monopolies and their billionaire founders and owners.
The rapid development of AI and pressures on policy makers, particularly in the EU and UK, to loosen AI-related regulatory frameworks, is predicated on a blind optimism that AI will be key for growth and innovation – a narrative promoted by Big Tech firms that have a stranglehold on digital ecosystems.
Amba Kak, Executive Director of AI Now Institute said,
“We're at a moment where the scales are tipped so heavily toward big firms, we need to talk about what kinds of countervailing power will put the public back at the centre of the conversation on AI”
Robust enforcement of competition policy must be used to prevent economic concentration or break it up when it’s anti-competitive and not in the public interest. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) must learn from past mistakes and resist UK government pressure to take a relaxed approach to mergers and acquisitions.
The UK’s creative industry has an impressive track record in contributing to national income, is a pioneer on the global stage, and enriches culture and society. Generative-AI is yet to prove itself as a positive force for public good. For a government that wants “growth at all costs”, the UK creative industry is a surer bet than an untested generative AI industry.
Photo by Silvestri Matteo
End notes
Listen to Claire Godfrey, Executive Director, Balanced Economy Project, talking to Diarmid O'Sullivan on the 'Critical Takes' podcast, Curbing monopoly power: what happens now?
They discuss the challenges, opportunities and actions that can be taken to curb excessive concentrations of market power and balance our distorted economies (20 minutes).
ICYMI World Economic Forum: Reining in the Extreme Power and Influence of the Tech Billionaires.
Democracy is at risk in Davos thanks to the tech giants
The annual gathering of the super-rich and political decision-makers kicks off soon in Davos, Switzerland. To mark the occasion,
Balanced Economy Project, Global Justice Now, and LobbyControl, have launched a new report that highlights the excessive influence of corporations and their owners on the democratic process and calls for urgent action.