The ‘Sovereign AI Fund’, which invests UK taxpayers’ money, announced its first portfolio of 6 companies .
Some of them seem to train AI on copyrighted work without a licence.
UK taxpayer money should not go to AI companies that exploit creatives.
Suspect this won't go down well
Lots of AI companies train in this way and hope to get away with it - but any UK company doing so would be breaking UK copyright law.
It seems reasonable that taxpayers' money should not be invested in these companies.
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The UK’s Sovereign AI Fund launches today.
Journalists covering it - please ask whether it will invest in companies that train on copyrighted work without a licence.
I asked its Chair this, and he replied without answering the question.
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- Only 1 in 4 US adults think it will improve how people do their jobs; 1 in 5 think it will improve the economy; 1 in 5 think it will improve arts and entertainment
- Globally, 79% of people think that products using AI should disclose that they do so
hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/202...
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This new report from Stanford shows quite how unpopular AI is becoming. Some highlights:
- 64% of U.S. adults think it will lead to fewer jobs; only 5% think it will lead to more jobs
- In the UK, only one in five people thinks AI will improve the job market
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“… and have devastating consequences on the environment all to create facsimiles of real human art. There is no place for generative AI at art school- we call to disband ‘Bots, Beats and Bytes’ and any other promotion of generative AI at Berklee.”
wbznewsradio.iheart.com/content/some...
Berklee College of Music students are petitioning for the school’s ‘AI music in songwriting’ class to be dropped.
“AI models like Chat GPT that are being promoted by the Berklee Songwriting Department steal the art of 10's of 1000's of artists and rot the essence of the industry…”
1/2
strong tell for ai music right now - tons of songs, all sound the same.
this guy is number 2 in the uk spotify charts.
pure slop. what is spotify doing allowing this??
No it’s not
A mistake people often make is assuming that highlighting the downsides of AI means you’re anti-tech.
I am hugely pro-tech, but I think generative AI, on the path it’s currently on, will be net negative.
I think many feel the same.
Opposing AI boosterism ≠ being anti-tech.
The growing evidence that AI memorizes training data is leading to predictable goalpost-shifting among AI cheerleaders.
They used to say AI doesn’t memorize its training data. Now they admit it does, but that this doesn’t matter.
If it doesn’t matter, why not admit it from the start?
This new paper is the death knell for the tired argument that AI models don't memorise their training data.
They do. This paper proves it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
I wrote up the paper's findings here: dontstealthisblog.substack.com/p/large-lang...
This website shows you how much money is being siphoned off from artists by AI slop on Spotify.
Over $2.5 million lost by real people - and that's just from 50 AI ‘artists’.
Slop dilutes royalties. A major reason AI training on copyrighted work should not be considered fair use.
sloptracker.org
“AI l cannot coexist with education - it can only degrade it.”
Incredibly powerful piece from students at the University of Pennsylvania.
www.thedp.com/article/2026...
‘Tech companies believe in intellectual property, but not yours.”
Great piece in The Atlantic pointing out that AI companies spend huge amounts of money simultaneously (i) defending their own IP and (ii) arguing that they can use other people’s for free.
www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...
With Labour still considering a new copyright exception to benefit AI developers, this is fantastic to see.
greenparty.org.uk/2026/03/19/d...
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The Green Party just came out strongly in favour of creatives in their battle against exploitation by AI companies.
They urge the government to commit to not weakening copyright law.
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Read the full report here: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/69ba69...
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Until the government rules out weakening copyright law, people need to keep making their voices heard. Our work is not the government's to give away. Speaking up works.
7/8
But it's important not to see this as more of a win than it really is. The government is still considering weakening copyright law to favour AI companies, and those AI companies will continue to lobby very hard for them to do so.
6/8
Credit should go to the many, many creatives who fought that proposal, and to the new leadership at DSIT for listening.
5/8
We are obviously in a better position than we were eighteen months ago, when the government was clearly in the pocket of big tech and was actively proposing an extremely harmful policy.
4/8
The bad news is that weakening copyright law is very much still on the table. They haven't actually ruled out that hugely unpopular opt-out proposal, and they are explicit that they are still considering other forms of copyright exception too.
3/8
The good news for creatives is that the government formally dropped its preferred option of a broad copyright exception with an opt-out. This was unworkable and hugely unpopular. It's good that they've recognised this.
2/8
The UK government released its progress report on AI & copyright today.
There’s good and bad news.
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The government should now reaffirm what the law says - that AI companies must license people's work if they want to train on it - and commit not to change that law.
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We should be grateful to the government for listening to reason on this, rather than just listening to the big tech lobby. They have done the right thing by putting opt-out behind us.
3/4
The opt-out proposal was unfair and unworkable. Many couldn't realistically have opted out at all, and it would have affected small rights holders disproportionately negatively.
2/4
Fantastic news in the UK today - the government has apparently ditched its plan to force creatives to 'opt out' if they don't want AI companies training on their life's work.
www.thetimes.com/uk/technolog...
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I am one of thousands of authors to contribute to Don’t Steal This Book to draw attention to daylight robbery. I wrote the following poem and post it online knowing that I am feeding the beast, but also hoping that it illuminates the problem
