British novelists criticise government over AI ‘theft’ | Richard Osman and Kate Mosse say plan to mine artistic works for data would destroy creative fields
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/14/british-novelists-criticise-government-over-ai-theft
Posted by MetaKnowing
18 Comments
As a dyslexic person, I thoroughly enjoy being able to write with the talent of a great novelist. I downloaded music from LimeWire, movies from The Pirate Bay, and if I could download a six-pack from Barry’s Bootcamp, you bet I’d do that too.
Now with the atmospheric tone of Kate Mosse…
As someone who has always seen the world through the lens of dyslexia, I take great joy in crafting words with the grace of a seasoned novelist. Once, I downloaded music from LimeWire, stolen notes slipping through unseen cracks in the digital world. Then came movies from The Pirate Bay, fragments of untold stories landing, one by one, in my grasp. And if it were possible to capture a six-pack from Barry’s Bootcamp with a click, to conjure sweat and muscle from thin air—oh, how I would embrace that magic, too.
And the next round is…
Dong-dong Dang Dong
“Ai Ai Skipper”
In this round, you’ll see three literary verses.
Two have been reinterpreted and changed by AI technology,
One, however, is an original piece from an author who skipped out on allowing AI to include their work.
Buzz in if you can think you know which one is the original work.
I really fucking hate how we’re shipping off the most fundamental element of being a human to Robots and I’m still sat in a fucking office making sure tech works.
Surely it should be the other way around?
Every human author or artist mines other works for data too.
“I’m only stealing your stuff because you haven’t made the effort to make it un-stealable” is a basic tenet of the thievery that made this country what it is. Traditional British Values! Hurrah!.
Of course the tech bro fan club will chime in on how “it’s not fair only creatives make art” or some other such shite.
But that’s because all they know is how to copy, change and claim it’s new.
And when people stop creating because theirs no money it, we’ll all just feed of the same recycled slop.
Art is a human endeavour. There is not – and never will be – AI “art”. There might be imitations and averages and fucking copies but art cannot be made by a fucking algorithm
All the AI crowd will with their usual short sightedness say AI is just a tool. We have copyright laws for a reason. Students are thrown off courses because of plagiarism because we see passing off someone else’s work as your own as deceitful. This is another example of Starmer failing to do the right thing and put in place regulations and frameworks before dashing ahead.
Those damn cars are destroying the horse and cart market.
Aww, did the nasty computers make the wrong people obsolete?
I think this is incredibly unethical.
But to allow this without any kind of AI legislation, oversight or even guidance is beyond stupid. We are already drowning under a tide of misinformation and bots create false “facts”. Now they want to actively improve AI’s capability to distort our perception of the world, whilst also destroying many livelihoods and jobs.
Wtf is wrong with this government?
Anyone else remember how audio cassettes were going to destroy the music industry ? Or VCR’s the movie industry ?
The fact that AI could probably write a better book than Richard Osman says more about him.
For a while I really thought this government would be way better than the Tories but they are barely better at best.
I don’t think it’ll destroy it, but it’s quite simple really: if the AI companies want to use copyrighted material so they can go and make money themselves, they need to pay a suitable licence fee to the copyright owners. It’s what the rest of us would have to do.
I think ultimately it is a good idea to provide AI with all human knowledge and try to train AI and improve it to the point it can self learn and surpass human competence.
I think the outcome is worth it. Humans produce some amazing things of course but the rise of culture and then technology requires a super intelligence to make wise decisions beyond the competence of single humans or even the collective expertise pooled in institutions of humans.
I think what needs looking at is not preventing the above but the economics of jobs and creative industries and ownership and rights and legal for making a livihood.
It seems to me in the coming age, these will all have to be redrawn and reshaped. I think the answer lives there to try think rationally and not react emotionally on this subject.
Yeah but big billionaires are saving money and that’s the important thing, wouldn’t want them to take their business elsewhere would we
Yeah but what if they are dead? Copyright is gone so I’m alright to copy?
AI is fucking great for generating images of dogs in Puffa jackets and cats at the controls of spacecraft. That’s it’s forte, literally anything else it produces is for idiots.