Artificial Intelligence, Arts, Intellectual Property, Publishing, Technology

Authors should be protected over big tech

COPYRIGHT LAWS AND AI

Intro: Creative artists and writers are voicing their anger at AI theft of their work with ‘Human Authored’ logos and an empty book. The government must listen

DURING last week’s London Book Fair, The Society of Authors stamped its books with “Human Authored” logos, in scenes that might have come from a dystopian novel. They described its labelling scheme as “an important sticking plaster to protect and promote human creativity in lieu of AI labelled content in the marketplace”.

Entrants to the fair were also given copies of Don’t Steal This Book, an anthology of some 10,000 writers including Nobel laureate Kazuo Ishiguro, Malorie Blackman, Jeanette Winterson, and Richard Osman. The pages of the book are completely blank, but the back cover states: “The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies.” The message is clear and simple: writers have had enough.

The book fair arrived before the government is due to deliver its progress report on AI and copyright, after proposals for a relaxation of existing laws caused outrage last year. Philippa Gregory, the novelist, described the plans for an “opt-out” policy, which puts the onus on writers to refuse permission for their work to be trawled, as akin to putting a sign on your front door asking burglars to pass by.

According to a University of Cambridge study last autumn, almost 60% of published authors believe their work has been used to train large language models without consent or reimbursement. And nearly 40% said their income had already fallen as a result of generative AI or machine-made novels, a digital incarnation of Orwell’s Versificator in Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Factual books are clearly most susceptible to ChatGPT and other AI generative tools. While sales in fiction are rising, sales of nonfiction were down 6% last year compared with 2024. But three nonfiction books, all by female authors, bucked the trend: Nobody’s Girl, Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous memoir of abuse; A Hymn to Life, Gisèle Pel icot’s testimony and account of her ordeal at the hands of her ex-husband; and Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams’s exposé of working at Facebook. The success of these first-person narrations show the powerful reach of nonfiction beyond the world of publishing. These are painfully human stories; readers must be able to trust in the authenticity of their voices.

Last year, novelist Sarah Hall requested that her publisher Faber, print a “Human Written” stamp on her latest book, Helm. “AI might mimic the words more rapidly, but . . . it hasn’t bled on the page,” she said. “And it doesn’t have a family to support.”

Writers’ livelihoods must not be sacrificed to the promise of economic growth. The UK’s creative industries contributed £124bn to the UK economy in 2023, of which £11bn came from publishing. The Society of Authors is requesting consent and fair payment for use of work, and transparency as to how a book was “written”. These are hardly radical propositions. But in an era of fake news and AI slop, they are sadly necessary. Writers and creative artists need more than sticking plasters. They need robust legislation.

A House of Lords report recently published lays out two possible futures: one in which the UK “becomes a world-leading home for responsible, legalised artificial intelligence (AI) development” and another in which it continues “to drift towards tacit acceptance of large-scale, unlicensed use of creative content”. One scenario protects UK artists, the other benefits global tech companies. To avoid a world of empty content, the choice is clear.

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Arts, Broadcasting, Culture, Opera, Theatre

Fires of the Moon

MUSICAL-THEATRE

– Fires of the Moon is powerfully imagined and atmospherically shot Credit: Channel 4

This powerfully imagined and atmospheric new piece of music-theatre, with an outstanding cast of Welsh singers, is a rare creation that blends film, opera, and drama. A screening such as this rarely makes it to television.

Originally an opera commissioned by OPRA Cymru, first shown as a film at the Edinburgh Film Festival last summer, Fires of the Moon (Channel 4/S4C) is not an example of an opera setting a book, but rather a free imagining of some scenes from Un Nos Ola Leuad (1961) by Caradog Prichard – a modern classic that has become familiar in translation as One Moonlit Night. It was a novel initially criticised for its unrelenting view of Welsh life but became accepted as a realistic reflection of a changing world.

Haunting and elegiac, the visual style conjures up the bleak landscapes of Wales – slate quarries, gloomy pubs, shining lakes and distant hills, with the evocative steam engine of Blaenau Ffestiniog puffing through. In the 1950s, a son Hogyn returns by train to visit his mother who, a generation ago, was confined to an asylum. But why? The story unravels from a youthful romance between Hogyn and Jini, replayed in a cinema that he watches with Jini as the usherette, and the tale pulls no punches in its depiction of an unforgiving society.

Commencing with what sounds like a deliberate homage to the music of Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius (and even a nod to his unfinished Third Symphony), the beautifully judged score by Gareth Glyn nourishes the narrative. Most will not know how well the Welsh text is reflected musically, except that its subtitled vocal lines sit perfectly within the framework that Glyn creates in his idiom, at once romantic and eclectic, that draws on everything from film music to Britten and Berg.

The orchestral playing by the Welsh National Opera Orchestra is vividly textured and strongly audible under conductor Iwan Teifion Davies (who is also the co-librettist with Patrick Young). The scenario by Marc Evans, though arguably lacking in contrast, allows for a choral number in the pub, a tense tea-time scene, and an intricate quartet in the car on the way to the gloom of the asylum.

Tenor Huw Ynyr is outstanding as the grown Hogyn, as is Dylan Jones as Hogyn the child, writing the story on the old typewriter as well as living it. Annes Elwy is Jini; the tormented figure of Mam is powerfully drawn by soprano Elin Pritchard. The attack by her brother and the scene of her awkward removal to the Denbigh Asylum are the most painful parts of the story.

Chris Forster directs; the black-and-white cinematography under Ben Chads is consistently excellent, and the synchronisation of the voices – always the trickiest aspect of opera with the voices shot separately for film – is pretty good.

This is an absorbing piece of music-theatre which demonstrates the distinctiveness and best of Welsh music and film-making. It also offers a way forward for transforming the medium of staged opera into compelling film.

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Economic, Government, Politics, Society, United States

With or without tariffs, Trump has reshaped the world

GLOBAL ECONOMY

When the US Supreme Court ruled that Donald Trump’s tariffs were illegal, he reacted with characteristic fury saying the decision is a “disgrace” and that the judges have been swayed by “foreign interests”. Trump then asserted that he has a back-up plan ready to go.

Over the next few days, he may well use all the power of his office to find a way of reimposing additional levies on everything America imports (on top of the 10pc he has already announced).

And yet, despite all of the drama of the decision, it may not make a great deal of difference. Tariffs have already fundamentally reshaped the global economy – and there will be no return to the old order now.

The decision of the Court was split by six votes to three, but was still clear enough. By relying on a 1977 law meant for national emergencies to impose sweeping tariffs on everything from cars to toys to microchips, Trump exceeded the power of his office.

In peacetime, it is the role of Congress to decide on import levies. Trump can try to find another legal route if he wants to; but for now, his original tariffs are dead in the water.

So, does that mean we can all go back to the global trading system that has reigned for the last half-century? One in which the rules-based order is back, where free and open trade is restored, and where globalised supply chains can operate without any barriers? Well, not exactly.

As much as the European Union, the World Trade Organisation, and the gatherings of Davos might want it to, there is no going back to the old system. The world has changed too much since “liberation day” last April for that to happen.

To start, Trump has already said he will impose an additional 10pc global tariff, on top of the levies he has already forced through. Is that legal? At this stage, no one really knows.

The president is planning to use a section of the 1974 Trade Act which allows him to set import restrictions for 150 days, and it will probably be another year or more before the Court delivers a verdict on that decision.

By then, he may well be using another obscure piece of legislation, and then another. Trump is determined to impose tariffs, and will use all the power of the White House to make them stick. He doesn’t care how often the Court rules against him.

More significantly, just look at some of the ways that the global trading system has changed over the 10 months since the tariffs were first imposed.

Europe has already decoupled from the US as much as it can, and, where that hasn’t been possible, made concessions to hold the fort.

Japan has opened up its market to American rice, and will feel nervous of putting up barriers again simply because the Supreme Court ruling might mean it can do so.

China has started to build its own computing and chip industry, replacing the American hardware that it used to depend on.

Global conglomerates, such as Britain’s AstraZeneca for example, have already committed billions of dollars to building factories in the US to make sure their products are on the right side of the tariff wall, and, with those contracts already signed, there will be no movement to scrap those plans now. The list goes on.

The supply chains that span the world have already been reconfigured, and it is too late now for a complete reversal, even if some wanted to do it.  

Many of the senior figures around Trump probably suspected all along that the tariffs were illegal, but decided to go ahead anyway. They knew they would never get Congress to agree to them, and figured that a year would be enough time for the levies to change the global trading system.

In that judgement, then, they were correct. Surreptitiously, or maybe with some good fortune, they may even end up with the best of all possible worlds. The global trading system will have been reordered, and largely in America’s favour, with the tariffs as the battering ram.

But the levies themselves, with all the price rises for ordinary consumers that they triggered, will have to be ditched. The result will be falling inflation, and the Federal Reserve will be able to cut interest rates. That will help going into difficult mid-term elections later this year.

It will be messy over the next few weeks. The Trump presidency is a chaotic wild ride, and no policy has proved more disorderly than tariffs. We still don’t know if the White House’s new legal tricks will work? Or whether the president will try to persuade Congress to impose tariffs for him?

We don’t even know yet whether the billions of dollars in revenue collected from the tariffs will have to be repaid by the American government, and if so whether it is the manufacturers, the retailer, or even the consumer who will get the refund? Even by Trump’s standards everything is up in the air.

One point, however, is surely cast in stone. We are not about to return to the old trading system any time soon.

Trump has already reshaped the way goods move around the world. The huge trade imbalances between the US and the rest of the world will keep on being reduced. Manufacturing will move closer to the consumer. Trade flow will reduce, and barriers will remain in place.

Whether that will be better or worse than the old system is open for debate. Prices may well be higher, but against that there may well be better paid blue-collar jobs, and countries will rely more on their own resources.

Either way, that is the new reality, and one that Trump has created – and whether we like it or not, it will take more than six Supreme Court justices to stop that process now.

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