JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
More than a thousand musicians, including Kate Bush and Annie Lennox, joined forces to release an album this week. They are protesting proposed changes to British copyright laws around artificial intelligence. As NPR's Chloe Veltman reports, the album's 12 tracks have no words or music.
CHLOE VELTMAN, BYLINE: The album features occasional sounds of human life, like someone moving about in squeaky shoes...
(SOUNDBITE OF SQUEAKING FOOTSTEPS)
VELTMAN: ...Or moving a heavy object.
(SOUNDBITE OF HEAVY OBJECT MOVING)
VELTMAN: But much of it sounds like everyone left the building but forgot to turn off the mic.
(SOUNDBITE OF STATIC)
VELTMAN: The album was recorded in empty spaces, including the home studios of artists like Imogen Heap, and composer and pianist Max Richter. Composer Ed Newton-Rex runs a nonprofit encouraging AI companies only to train their models on creative works they have permission to use. He came up with a concept for the album titled, "Is This What We Want?"
ED NEWTON-REX: Empty studios and empty performance spaces and a negative effect on people's livelihoods. It's meant to symbolize, you know, what we think the result of the government's proposals would be.
VELTMAN: The U.K. is proposing that generative AI companies be allowed to train their models on creative works unless artists opt out. Newton-Rex says British law is just fine as it stands.
NEWTON-REX: U.K. creators and rights holders already have great control over how their work is used because it is illegal to use it to train a commercial generative AI model without their permission. What the government is suggesting would extract that control from them.
VELTMAN: A British government spokesperson says in a statement, the U.K.'s current regime for copyright and AI is holding back the creative industries, media and AI sector from realizing their full potential, and that cannot continue. United States laws are not as clear. Cases are currently winding their way through the courts.
This silent album is the latest in a series of protests by artists on both sides of the Atlantic. Nate Sloan is a University of Southern California musicologist, and cohost of the pop music podcast, "Switched On Pop." He says "Is This What We Want?" could make a particularly big impact.
NATE SLOAN: It challenges you to imagine a world in which there was no music because it's been so devalued that no one can make a living making it. And that's a really sobering and, I think, alarming thought.
VELTMAN: The U.K. government spokesperson says no moves will be made to change existing copyright law until the government has a workable plan, and that includes helping rights holders easily license their content. Chloe Veltman, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
