S Poddar
Prominent artists, including Kate Bush, Sam Fender, and Damon Albarn, have put out a silent album as a sign of protest against suggested reforms of copyright legislation which they fear can substitute human creatives with AI. The silent album is captioned Is This What We Want?. *, the record includes sounds of deserted studios and abandoned performance venues, representing a future where artists might become obsolete should these law revisions come into effect.
All the proceeds from the project will be donated to the Help Musicians charity.
The campaign has received backing from more than 1,000 musicians, such as Annie Lennox, Billy Ocean, Tom Grennan, New Order, Simon Le Bon, Tori Amos, Pet Shop Boys, The Clash, Bashy, Jamiroquai, and Imogen Heap. Renowned composers and organizations such as Hans Zimmer, the Royal Albert Hall, and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra have also rallied behind the cause.
In a bold gesture, the tracklist of the album sends a clear message: The British government should not legalize music piracy for the gain of AI businesses. The row is over a government proposal to enable AI programmers to utilize copyrighted content without an authorization license. Artists would have to specifically exclude their work to keep it safe, instead of automatically having control over its use.
This has been greeted with anger right across the arts industries. Sir Elton John, Simon Cowell, and Sir Paul McCartney are among those who have voiced their criticism against the proposal. The critics warn that the introduction of these would enable AI to copy and capitalize on the works of artists without adequate payment, suppressing creativity and unfairly putting burdens on artists to safeguard their work. The quiet album is also a protest, highlighting what most perceive as an existential threat to the industry. The fear is that AI content will flood the market and dilute the value of human creativity. This anxiety is not unique to music—Hollywood struggled with a similar fight in 2023 when AI’s role in scriptwriting and digital replica actors became at the forefront of the entertainment industry strikes.
At the same time, photographers and visual creatives keep resisting AI-based art generators that draw from publicly accessible images without permission.
Ed Newton-Rex, one of the leading campaigners for the project, was also a vocal critic of the government’s stance. He cautioned that the new law would essentially give AI firms musicians’ life’s work for nothing, enabling them to use existing works to take over the industry. “This isn’t just an issue for musicians,” he said. “The UK can lead in AI innovation without losing our world-leading creative industries.
The financial relevance of the music sector cannot be overemphasized. UK music in 2023 added £7.6 billion to the nation’s economy, with exports from music hitting £4.6 billion. Although a few AI firms have started getting licensing deals for copyrighted material, most continue to rely on scraping huge amounts of data from the web, including music, news, and literature, illegally.
Dan Conway, head of the Publishers Association, underscored the vast opposition to the government’s proposals, emphasizing that to disregard such opposition would be a terrible mistake. “When Booker, Grammy, Oscar, and Nobel Prize winners get together to object to these reforms, the government cannot ignore it,” he pressed. “The message is unmistakable: the great copyright robbery cannot pass unchecked.
As the government consultation on the matter comes to a close today, artists and industry experts hope that their protest falls upon the ears of lawmakers prior to irreversible harm being incurred. The silent record is a stark demonstration of a world in which AI, not human imagination, rules the arts.
