URGENT
If you want to participate in the government consultation you have only 2 days to act. 

It closes on the 25th.
The UK government is trying to change copyright law.
This affects all in the creative industries.

I wrote about my main concerns in a previous post two weeks ago.
But I wanted to add a few things I missed.


Some people in the comments seem confused about the nature of copyright.
The word ‘copyright’ itself is actually a little misleading, it terms of images ‘usage’ is a better way of thinking about it. I worked as a volunteer copyright advisor for the Association of Illustrators for five years. Image ‘usage’ is the key factor in copyright contracts, it is that that determines the fee that illustrators can expect to be paid. Small fees for short term usage, larger for longer terms. In some cases a client might want to own the copyright of an image entirely. This is called ‘buyout’. This allows the new copyright holder to alter the image if they like, since they hold the copyright to it they can do whatever they want. A copyright buyout can be a very significant sum for the illustrator.

Being able to use and reuse an image is effectively what the GenAI companies are doing. They are altering and using images and they are currently using them commercially, worldwide, for as long as they want. In that way it isn’t dissimilar to a copyright buyout. But they are doing this at an extraordinary scale. From a databank of more than 5 billion images. And for this they want to pay the artists nothing. When I think about this from the standpoint a copyright advisor it is just mind-boggling.


I asked the AI image generator MidJourney to create images in the style of one of my favourite graphic artists, Paul Rand. In seconds it came back with four impressive images that could at a glance might even pass for his original work. There were some odd things about them though, if you studied them closely. They had his colours, his shapes and even, in some of the images, his signature. When I looked closely at one of the signatures however it said ‘PARL RUNJ’ in his distinctive handwriting. 

Here is the thing: these images are not ‘inspired’ by the work of Paul Rand. They are copies of his work. They look the way they do because hundreds of Paul Rand’s copyrighted images were fed into a computer. True, the computer may have rearranged them and changed the spelling of his signature. But they are clearly using his work. They are using his work, without payment or permission, for commercial purposes. Under copyright law this is illegal.

I am not at all anti-tech. I would be only too happy to use any sort of technology if I believed I could make better work with it. I also just wrote a book about information technology that ends with Artificial Intelligence. It isn’t in anyway negative about technology. It also has a section in it about the history of copyright*. I am also keen to share skills and share how I make my art and have done many, many illustration and writing workshops. But I do that in order to help individuals, foster creativity and grow the industry. 

*Many people do not realise how central branding and copyright is to how society operates. This is not a fringe issue. For good or bad, 40% of the US economy is dependant on IP protections.

*I will post some of the copyright section of my book, hopefully tomorrow if I get time. Sorry I have been a bit slack. Follow me for more posts on this issue.

These powerful big tech companies have no interest in fostering creativity. Or growing the industry. The opposite. They have knowingly stolen copyrighted material and now they are trying to change copyright so they can profit from us into the future. They have huge amounts of money behind them. If these lobbies succeed in convincing our government we will effectively be handing all the wealth created by the creative industries, hundreds of billions of pounds*, and giving it all straight to the tech industry. 

*Over 2.4 million people work in the creative industries in the UK and the industry is valued at more than 126 billion per year. Its value to society though has more to it than jobs and the money it adds to our economy. It is our entire culture: our music, our art, our literature.

According to some very dubious calculations AI** adoption apparently *could* grow the UK economy by 400 billion by 2030. This, it needs to be pointed out, is far less that the total actual contribution of the creative industries in that period. Plus, this is referring to AI in general, including its important medical and scientific applications not just the problematic GenAI which is all that concerns us here and would represent a very tiny fraction of this. 

What I have been talking about so far is monetary values. But this too is missing the point. Money may be the driving force behind many industries. But it is not the primary reason most people write and create art and films and do many of the other things we do. The creative industry is about expression rather than financial reward. Artistic expression is also protected under current copyright law. In my book, The History of Information, we used hundreds of original copyrighted images throughout history, from images pre-historic cave art all the way to modern day emojis. Some of these images had copyright conditions attached to them. For example the conditions attached to use one fascist propaganda poster in the book was that we explicitly made it clear in the description that it was propaganda. 

But this proposed copyright exception for GenAI would also necessarily strip this away. To give an example, as an artist I would never ever want to make an image that endorses far right symbols: nazi salutes, swastikas etc. But someone using GenAI could create images with my artwork in any way they choose. This argument from an ethical perspective is the thing that to me is most important in all this. And it is something that I have not seen written about anywhere in the consultation or elsewhere.


The nature of creativity is to question and so it is subversive. This means the creative class in society, artists, writers and others, are usually a thorn in the side of the ruling class. This is what a healthy democracy looks like. And it is precisely why we want to have free speech and a free press. But this proposed change in copyright law could jeopardise the source of income of these voices. Effectively silencing their dissent. This quote sums up the situation for me:
“The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth” Jeffowsky

I really do think this is a crucial moment, if this change in copyright law does go through it will be almost impossible to roll back. Please take action. 

Links in my bio. 
If you are reading this PLEASE GET INVOLVED:

1. EMAIL YOUR MP

2. SIGN THE STATEMENT

3. Please get the word out. WE HAVE VERY LITTLE TIME