Silent album: artists release joint protest against AI plans
One thousand artists in the UK have released a collaborative album without music to protest against the use of their work by AI.
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In the UK, over a thousand artists have released an album without music as a protest against the government's AI plans. Specifically, the protest is directed against the plan to allow companies to use protected works for training their AI models under a special copyright regulation. The authors would then have to object to the use of a so-called “opt-out option”.
The pieces feature the soundscapes of recording and performance venues that have been shut down. The album is intended to symbolize the threat to artists' livelihoods that would come about if the government were to put its plans into practice. The titles of the twelve songs on the album, “Is this what we want?”, in order, form the sentence “The British Government Must Not Legalize Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies”.
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“The government's proposal would give the works of the country's musicians for free to AI companies, who could use it to exploit the musicians' work to squeeze them out,” the Guardian quotes British composer Ed Newton-Rex as saying. The musicians named as co-authors of the tracks include Hans Zimmer, Cat Stevens and Kate Bush. All proceeds generated by streaming the album will go to the charity Help Musicians.
(tlz)
