Why the U.K. Entertainment Industry is Calling for A.I. Regulation
By Movieguide® Contributor
The U.K. Parliament’s Science, Innovation, and Technology committee is currently conducting investigations to figure out the most responsible way to regulate A.I. technology.
The U.K. government introduced a proposition to regulate A.I. in March of this year and on Wednesday, Jamie Njoku-Goodwin, CEO of U.K. Music, and Paul Fleming, general secretary of Equity, the U.K. trade union for creative practitioners appeared before parliament to share their thoughts on A.I.
A.I. technology has already been implemented in areas such as radio advertising and replacing extras on set in crowd scenes of movies and T.V. shows. The implementation of technology in these areas has cut into stable sources of income, reducing the money flowing out to actors.
Fleming believes this is an issue that needs to be resolved, but blames poor regulation for the negative effect of the technology, rather than the technology itself.
“This is not a doomsday scenario, we’re certainly not doom mongers about the technology itself,” Fleming said. “It presents a lot of other opportunities for work creation.
“New opportunities have to exist within a platform or a framework of proper regulation to allow collective bargaining to thrive, but also to protect the moral and legal rights of our members,” he continued.
Njoku-Goodwin got more into the detail, providing specific examples and longer explanations as to how the technology is currently being used and what needs to change. He explained that A.I. has been particularly useful in the music industry, helping identify copyright infringement and predicting audience analytics for business purposes. However, the technology becomes problematic when it is used to generate new music.
“It’s a basic principle that if you’re using someone else’s work, you need permission for that and you need to be observing and respecting the copyright. That’s the foundation of the industry. It’s what the industry has built its success on,” Njoku-Goodwin said. “The current model of innovations in A.I. is posing all sorts of challenges to that.”
“There’s definitely a conversation we need about what sort of protection we need in terms of image rights and personality rights, because this is just an issue which is going to grow and grow not just in the music world but across entertainment and creative industries and society more broadly,” he continued.
Equity is currently running a campaign to gather data on how performers feel about A.I. technology. They found that 65% of performers think the development of A.I. technology poses a threat to employment opportunities in the performing arts sector. Additionally, 93% of Equity members believe new legal protections for performers need to be introduced so their work cannot be reproduced by A.I. without their consent.
“Our members, they don’t hate new technology. They’re not frightened of new technology. But what they dislike is… the malicious use of that technology in order to undermine their terms and conditions,” Fleming said.
Movieguide® previously reported on A.I. regulation:
A group of over 1,000 tech experts published an open letter and petition last week, calling for a 6-month pause on AI development to ensure proper ethics and management.
The open letter was signed by tech leaders from around the world, including SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk, Apple Co-Founder Steve Wosniak, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, Executive Director of the Center for Humane Technology Tristan Harris and the founder of the AI research institute Mila, Yoshua Benigo.
“Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth, and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources,” the letter opens.
“Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control,” it continues.
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