Damon Albarn, Kate Bush among 1,000+ artists on album protesting UK’s AI plans

[Teletubby 140,553]

More than 1,000 artists – including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox of Eurythmics, and Damon Albarn of Blur and The Gorillaz – have released a “silent album” to protest the UK government’s plans to loosen copyright laws around the training of AI.

The album is meant to evoke a point: The proposed copyright rules could silence musical artists. The point was highlighted by a question from Kate Bush of Running Up That Hill fame: “In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?”

Titled Is This What We Want?, the silent album features a back cover track list that spells out “The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies.”

In late 2024, the UK government proposed changing copyright law to allow artificial intelligence companies to build their products using other people’s copyrighted work - music, artworks, text, and more - without a licence.

The musicians on this album came together to protest this. The album consists of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, representing the impact we expect the government’s proposals would have on musicians’ livelihoods.

All profits from the album are being donated to the charity Help Musicians.
source https://www.isthiswhatwewant.com/

[PrincessGUY 392]

Will be streaming

[bionic 46,567]

fr the way governments kowtow to private companies freely exploiting intellectual properties to train AI is wild

there's got to be something shady afoot because it makes no sense that the political class hand this completely freely to the economic elites 

[CautiousLurker 17,883]

Oh good, I showed up before the 'its inevitable, adapt or die' crowd