“AI” NONSENSE-RESOURCES

Haringey Creatives Against AI is a very loose group of creatives with some links to the All Good Bookshop. It’s not an official bookshop project (yet). Support our statement by messaging me on this site. Currently trying to sound out the local MPs – Bambos Charalambous is supportive of creators and we haven’t heard back from the others. (No diss, just too early to have heard).

Name and what type of creating you do – this is very much NOT just writersEmail to stay in touch on this (only) – we have a privacy policyIdeally postcode so we can know who your MP is.

Bambos posted: “Great to meet author & constituent [Stephen Cox] today to discuss the importance of copyright as AI technology is on the rise. We must protect the rights of our creatives & value the contributions they make both to the economy & society.”

Write to your MP and any Lords you know

This website finds out which MP is yours, and how to contact them. All you need is your postcode.  Write or call and ask for a meeting.  You’ll need to give your postcode as they need to know if you are a constituent. The alliance of creatives, Creative Rights in AI, has an email your MP function. I would strongly suggest personalising this – the more cut and paste your communication, the less attention an MP may give. Even if you say ‘I have three books X Y Z out’ or ‘my short film ‘123’ was shortlisted for a regional prize’, it helps. It has a sentence ‘creators welcome the benefits of AI’ which personally I would remove.

The Government’s Sell Out Consultation closes 25 February

Copyright champions ALCS have a guide to filling it out which is sound, and some other actions.

Compensation for past training. The Government proposals allows an entire industry to face no cost for piracy. It basically screws us forever. Billion dollar companies should pay creatives for using their work.

In future say, companies can only train on your material if you OPT IN.

Right morallyWill create an actual market for high quality stuff to train on.

Here’s one letter to an MP, just as an example. But make it personal -how will it affect you, and your creative community. And using your own words is best.

We are deeply concerned about the proposals on AI and copyright going through Parliament and hope you will help us challenge them. We are an informal group of creatives and others connected with the All Good Bookshop. We are novelists, writers, artists, film-makers, etc.

Would you be able to meet us?

We are aware of the IPO consultation and some of us have answered it. It is framed to support the government position, and so longwinded that it will deter many from completing it.

The proposals pardon AI companies who have trained their LLMs on our work retrospectively – the billion-dollar businesses they built using our work will never need to pay creatives any recompense. It upends the normal copyright law, which is that use requires the copyholder’s consent. The companies knew they were likely to be in breach of these rights. A recent court filing said Mark Zuckerberg personally authorised using 197,000 pirated books for train Meta’s AI despite internal concerns.

The proposals for the future are deeply flawed. An opt-out system will push administration onto the small creative – with our material on many different platforms, often with opaque terms and conditions. Opt-in is right in principle, and it will force the AI companies to offer clear systems and fair reward.

The creative industries are 5% of GDP but their diversity, originality and vibrancy depends on thousands of individuals. Financial rewards are usually poor, we are confident we do better work than machines, but it is not fair that our work can be used to compete with us, and undercut us, without our permission.

As far as we know, all major bodies representing creators oppose these proposals.

Of course, we accept some uses of LLMs could be ethically trained and socially useful.

Yours etc

My newsletter – subscribe here.

I try to write about a wide range of writing issues but the back issues contain a certain amount about AI!

Finally the statement by 40,000 plus creatives about AI. Fine to sign this too and be in the same list as members of Abba, composers, poets and National Treasures.