Sir Nick Clegg said it was “not unreasonable” for artists to want to be able to opt out of their work being used to train AI
DAVID MCHUGH FOR THE TIMES
Making technology companies ask artists’ permission before they scrape copyrighted content will “basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight,” Sir Nick Clegg has said.
The former deputy prime minister, who spent almost seven years working for the social media giant Meta, sided with technology companies when asked on Thursday about the clash over AI copyright laws.
He was speaking as MPs voted against proposals that would have allowed copyright holders to see when their work had been used and by whom.
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.
However, Clegg said that their demands to make technology companies ask permission before using copyrighted work were unworkable and “implausible” because AI systems are already training on vast amounts of data. He said: “It’s out there already.”
Clegg defended technology companies at an event to promote his book How to Save the Internet, which will be released in September.
Speaking at the Charleston Festival, held at the East Sussex farmhouse made famous by the artist Vanessa Bell and the early 20th-century creatives known as the Bloomsbury Group, Clegg claimed that artificial intelligence was already able to “create” its own art.
“You can already create art of a sort [using AI], whether it’s a poem, a ditty, an essay, a short story, a picture. You can already do that,” he said
Referring to the question of whether “artists should be able to withhold their content from the AI models that are being trained,” he said: “On the one hand, yeah, I think it seems to me as a matter of natural justice, to say to people that they should be able to opt out of having their creativity, their products, what they’ve worked on indefinitely modelled. That seems to me to be not unreasonable to opt out.”
However, he added, “I think the creative community wants to go a step further. Quite a lot of voices say ‘you can only train on my content, [if you] first ask’. And I have to say that strikes me as somewhat implausible because these systems train on vast amounts of data.
“I just don’t know how you go around, asking everyone first. I just don’t see how that would work. And by the way if you did it in Britain and no one else did it, you would basically kill the AI industry in this country overnight.
“So, I think people should have clear, easy to use ways of saying, no, I don’t. I want out of this. But I think expecting the industry, technologically or otherwise, to preemptively ask before they even start training — I just don’t see. I’m afraid that just collides with the physics of the technology itself.”
Parliament heard on Thursday how both sectors needed to succeed to grow Britain’s economy. MPs voted 195 to 124, majority 71, to disagree with Baroness Kidron’s transparency amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill.
Clegg stepped down from his job at Meta earlier this year, after seven years in Silicon Valley. He resigned from his role as president of global affairs just weeks before President Trump’s return to the White House.
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