Abstract

The Creators’ Rights Alliance (CRA) is a coalition of 23 major creative organizations, trade associations, and unions, between them representing over 500,000 creator members and several million individuals working as creators in the United Kingdom’s creative industries.

We believe that the sector is at serious risk of losing creative individuals, who will no longer choose to train and invest their own time and money in developing their art, skills, and careers if others can simply use this investment, free of charge or attribution, to ‘create’ derivative and synthetically assisted products that they can sell to consumers as their own.

Creators’ work should not be copied by platforms for use in data sets without their prior express permission; licensing agreements should be negotiated, either individually or through our well-developed licensing models with clear terms of usage and appropriate levels of remuneration. Artificial intelligence (AI) companies must be compelled to disclose the source of the texts, images, and sounds used to develop their systems so that users can see the authenticity of the work and creators can be reassured that their work has not been illegally accessed.

Keywords: creators' rights, intellectual property, moral rights, performing rights, consent

Nobody remembers the great machines and software in history as much as we remember the great artists, composers, writers, and performers. Creators have always been the lifeblood of our cultural and creative economy. Consumers want the empathy, wisdom, insight, and trust that they gain from human creations.

Creative freelancers make up a third of the creative industry’s workforce. Are we ready to put the driving force of a sector, which is worth an estimated £126 billion to the U.K. economy in 2022, up from £115 billion in 2021, at risk for quick and unregulated gains?

There are no creative artificial intelligence (AI) solutions or products without amazing and inspirational work and art that our creators produce. Yet it is clear that many large language model (LLM) systems have been developed by wholesale copying of creative works without credit, consent, or compensation.

The Creators’ Rights Alliance (CRA) is a coalition of 23 major creator-led groups, trade associations, and unions, between them representing over 500,000 creator members and several million individuals working as creators in the United Kingdom’s creative industries.

We believe that we are at serious risk of losing our creative individuals, who will no longer choose to train and invest their own time and money in developing their art, skills, and careers if others can simply use this investment, free of charge or attribution, to ‘create’ derivative and synthetically assisted products that they can sell to consumers as their own. Other businesses, including AI, would rightly think this situation was ludicrous.

Technology and innovation are important and essential for progress. The CRA recognizes that AI provides huge opportunities for creators; these tools already do a huge amount of repetitive work for us, and creators, like others, may want to experiment with generative AI as a tool in the creative process. We are simply asking for a fair playing field—that all sides work together to ensure that any implementation of AI, LLMs, and machine learning is regulated and acknowledges, credits, and pays for use of the rights that creators hold in their OWN work.

We ask that companies and the AI systems are not automatically given unfair priority over the needs and rights of human creators, and for the basic right to choose, and to be compensated for the work used. The fundamental principles of copyright and moral rights that creators and performers have in their own work need to be recognized along with the right to decide whether OR NOT to allow uses of it.

Creators’ work should not be copied by platforms for use in data sets without their prior express permission; licensing agreements should be negotiated, either individually or through our well-developed licensing models with clear terms of usage and appropriate levels of remuneration. AI companies must be compelled to disclose the source of the texts, images, and sounds used to develop their systems so that users can see the authenticity of the work and creators can be reassured that their work has not been illegally accessed.

There are also distinct and sometimes personal characteristics that individual performers and artists have, which should be protected. Simulating or mimicking the voice and style of a performance or work blatantly ignores the investment in time, skills, and money required to achieve a valued personal ‘brand’ and is confusing and deceptive to the public.

Where work is misused or used without permission there must be access to affordable and effective methods to enforce claims, especially in terms of compelling takedowns or withdrawal of content created without permission and securing compensation for loss and damage. There is a huge disparity in the size, as well as in financial and legal resources, of international tech developers vs. individuals. Creators can feel helpless in the face of these huge international organizations and the power they wield.

Those creators and individuals who use AI tools to produce their own original works should have their copyright protected. There must be clear definitions of what constitutes solely AI-generated work, and that made with human creator intervention.

AI has the potential to impact creators in other ways, including decisions that are made about them. These can be made without context or understanding of how creators work and their specific needs. All individuals have the right for any decisions relating to them and their work made by AI to be reviewed and accessed by a human being.

The CRA is working with the Intellectual Property Office, Department of Culture, Media and Sport, and our colleagues in the creative industries on a proposed code of practice for the United Kingdom relating to AI and the use of creators’ work. We are calling for any voluntary system that is not a statement of government policy to be backed with regulation and enforcement measures that protect creators and the rights they have in their work.

There must also be a level playing field and access to tax incentives and breaks. As our chair, Nicola Solomon, puts it (personal communication, April, 2024) “Buying large amounts of machinery or software brings capital allowances yet if you take on real people you have to pay their tax, their National Insurance and so on. It actually becomes cheaper to buy and use machinery than to buy and use people, even if the costs are the same. We need money to be in the hands of people, because people spend, and it is that which stimulates the economy. But if the money goes into the hands of a very few tech companies, especially outside the UK, who often don’t pay tax in the UK, then what we are doing is siphoning money out of the economy, and that is bad for everybody.”

So let us work together to ensure that our creators and AI work to better society and each other and to not trample on or trivialize creativity. If we do not, we are leaving tech companies, the rich, and the influential to decide who gets to make a career from being a creator, as well as deciding on the authenticity of the work we see and voices we hear.

Disclosure Statement

Seamus McGibbon and Nicola Solomon have no financial or non-financial disclosures to share for this article.

©2024 Seamus McGibbon and Nicola Solomon. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) International license, except where otherwise indicated with respect to particular material included in the article.