How to kill the arts

As a reminder: in 2021, fishing contributed around 0.03% of total UK economic output. In 2022, the creative industries sector represented 5.2% of the GVA of the whole British economy. Still, one of them was everywhere and the other was simply swept under the carpet.

Of course, you may be tempted to blame the then-Conservative governments for this; neither Theresa May nor Boris Johnson instinctively felt like great patrons of the arts. The less is said about Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak in that department, the better. Surely, a Labour party back in power would do better, right? …Right?

Well, apparently not. Earlier this week, 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush, released a silent “album” as a protest against government proposals to let AI firms train their models on anything they can find online, including copyrighted content. The move was only the latest in a lengthy and increasingly desperate campaign, which included an open letter published last October and now signed by nearly 50,000 creatives, including Julianne Moore, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and author Kazuo Ishiguro.

“When AI companies call this ‘training data’, they dehumanise it. What we’re talking about is people’s work – their writing, their art, their music”, said the letter, originally written by British composer Ed Newton-Rex. The dial had failed to shift then, and is still only vaguely trembling. On Tuesday, the Guardian published an exclusive story which hinted at a bit of a climb down from the government.

According to their sources, “ministers have accepted the need to protect British creative industries from the plans [to train AI models on the whole web]”. As things stand, artists and other creative industry workers would be able to opt out from their output being used by these companies, a move which campaigners have argued would place too much burden on individuals, and may end up being too legislatively fiddly.

The hope is that ministers will look at different approaches instead, but nothing concrete has been announced yet. Again, it’s an incredibly frustrating state of affairs. Were any other industry responsible for 5% of the economy, it seems pretty certain that they would have been offered a seat at the table from the very beginning. You don’t have to be a hippie or a pinko to stand for the arts; they can and should be defended on a purely cynical, patriotic basis.

British music, literature, movies and television are known and respected around the world. They’re keeping thousands and thousands in employment. They’re actually still growing, when many other industries aren’t. What else can the government possibly need to realise that it’s worth fighting for them to keep existing?

Of course, AI is only one of the problems the arts are facing right now. The cost of living crisis has meant that fewer and fewer people from working class backgrounds have been able to become musicians, artists, filmmakers and authors. The internet has fundamentally reshaped the journalism industry, and not always for the better. Is it really too much to ask for the state to hand creatives just this one lifeline, when it could do with several?

Tech optimists may argue that AI will change everything, and Britain needs all the help it can get when it comes to economic growth. They may not be wrong, but they may not be right either – that’s the whole point. Before throwing their lot with an innovation that has barely been tested and found to function properly, couldn’t the government perhaps try standing by an industry which has already been thriving for decades?