The release of a new album, Is This What We Want?, which features silent contributions from musicians including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and Annie Lennox, is drawing attention to proposed changes to UK copyright law in regards to AI.
The protest album, organized by musician and AI entrepreneur Ed Newton-Rex, is made up of 12 tracks that include more than 47 minutes of silence recorded in empty studios and other spaces by more than 1,000 contributors. The titles of the tracks combined say, “The British Government Must Not Legalise Music Theft To Benefit AI Companies.”
The album, along with a previous statement released months ago by nearly 50,000 creatives and artists, is aligned against proposed UK changes that would allow companies to train AI models on fair use as well as copyrighted content unless copyright owners specifically opt out of giving permission.
