Baroness says creatives should get universal basic income if their work is "stolen" by AI
Should artists, writers, journalists and musicians get a new benefit to make up for being robbed by Big Tech?
The UK is preparing to give Big Tech giants a copyright exemption that will allow them to train AI models on the work of British creatives.
Now, a Baroness has suggested that a universal basic income could be a way of preventing artists, musicians, and writers from starving as artificial intelligence wolfs down their industries.
Labour's deeply controversial copyright move has sparked anger throughout the creative industries, culminating in the release of a silent album this week by legendary musicians including Blur's Damon Albaron and the enigmatic genius auteur Kate Bush, who said: "In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?"
In a coordinated effort, competing newspapers also ran exactly the same front page, which you can see below.
Announcing the move, Owen Meredith, CEO of News Media Association, said: “We already have gold-standard copyright laws in the UK. They have underpinned growth and job creation in the creative economy across the UK - supporting some of the world’s greatest creators - artists, authors, journalists, scriptwriters, singers and songwriters to name but a few.
“For a healthy democratic society, copyright is fundamental to publishers’ ability to invest in trusted quality journalism... The government proposes to weaken the law and essentially make it legal to steal content."
The Lords vs Artificial Intelligence
On Thursday, 27 February 2025, peers gathered in the House of Lords to discuss the proposals.
During the debate, Labour peer Baroness Chakrabarti said: "The intellectual property of creatives in this country is no less precious or important than the intellectual property of tech companies that have, frankly, already been scraping the internet for creative work and ripping these people off.
"Will the Government consider offering assistance to creatives, many of whom are really not very well off, to ensure that they have restitution for the grand theft that has already been perpetrated?"
Various lords, viscounts and other peers subsequently hummed and hawed eminently, with Tory grandee Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay slamming the government for being "very happy to meet representatives of big tech and AI firms but less willing to meet representatives of our thriving but threatened creative industries".
The Green Party's Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle then did something her party is not usually known for and put forward a semi-sensible suggestion about how to tackle the challenge.
"Big tech has already stolen large amounts of property," she said. "Had that property been cash or gold, we surely would be getting a different reaction from the government - yet it is actually the same thing.
"I have a constructive suggestion to help the Minister. How about a universal basic income for the creative sector as compensation?"
Labour's Baroness Jones then replied: "I thank the noble Baroness for her helpful suggestion. Hopefully, she has fed that into the consultation. I am sure it will be considered as one of the many proposals to resolve this issue."
From the AI age to the dole age...
The UK's artists have a long and storied history of receiving government benefits, with artists ranging from Morrissey of The Smiths to the Gallaghers of Oasis all spending months and even years on the dole.
Margaret Thatcher also inadvertently fed and watered the seedlings of creative growth with her Enterprise Allowance Scheme, which granted entrepreneurs an income of £40 a week for up to 12 months and freed them from dole checkups.
Perhaps by accident, Maggie ended up giving kickstarting the careers of Alan McGee of Creation Records, Laurence Bell of Domino Records, Jarvis Cocker from Pulp and Shaun Ryder from Happy Mondays, as well as visual artists including Tracey Emin and Jeremy Deller.
However, all that time spent dining at the table of the state was not in vain because many of the dole-raised creatives went on to make huge fortunes and (presumably) empty a large share of their earnings into the Treasury's coffers.
If AI really does start to write every song, book, film and television series, then the great conversion from dole dreamer to international superstar will become more or less impossible.
What will art in the age of AI look and sound like? We don't know. But clearly it's something worth paying for.
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