F ³: AI and the Rape of the Golden Goose

I read this on Bluesky the other day:

Nick Clegg: Artists' demands over copyright are unworkable:

The former Meta executive claims that a law requiring tech companies to ask permission to train Al on copyrighted work would 'kill' the Industry

My response: What is it about consent that these guys don’t understand?

Here’s the article.

Nick Clegg: Artists’ demands over copyright are unworkable, Lucy Bannerman, The Times

What do artists think?

Leading figures across the creative industries, including Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney, have urged the government not to "give our work away" at the behest of big tech, warning that the plans risk destroying the livelihoods of 2.5 million people who work in the UK's creative sector.

PRS for MUSIC, representing artists and copyright law in the UK, released the following statement:

Our response to Nick Clegg's recent comments about copyright and Al.

The idea that respecting copyright would 'kill' Al shows a lack of understanding of how the creative industries actually work and thrive.

Digital licensing frameworks already exist and function at scale.

It is not only possible but essential to build a commercial market that respects copyright and protects human creativity.

Don't let Al steal our music.

I’ve seen suggestions that AI will “democratize creativity” by allowing anyone to do it. In fact it is demanding artistic theft in order to provide people with a product that removes the essential experience of creation and all its accompanying joys. Reducing “artistic expression” to scrapings (and scrapings of scrapings) will not lead to great art but to derivative mediocrity and eventually to replicative failure.*

In the process it will bankrupt actual artists and make it impossible to create more of the real stuff which the AI industrial machine longs to scrape.

Today is National Creativity Day, founded in 2018 by Hal Croasmun of ScreenwritingU to “celebrate the imaginative spirits everywhere and to encourage them to keep creating.”

The irony is not lost on me.

So let’s close with a plea from an actual creator who goes by kitsuneart on Bluesky. If you click the link below you will see a gorgeous image that supports their statement. (I didn’t want to reproduce it here without consent.)

Support Human Artists

Share their work, drop them a kind word, tip their ko-fis, join their patreons...it matters more than you think.

We have to show up for each other while we still can. We have to uplift each other.

Happy National Creativity Day.

Village Green/Town² Comments

*fading? failure? Vague Star Trek Next Generation memory here.

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