The rapid adoption of AI has understandably raised fears for many about how this new industrial revolution will impact their lives, jobs, and wallets. But it has the potential to deliver enormous benefits, touching almost every aspect of our daily lives. Technology today enables vast volumes of data to be processed and organised at speeds that would have been unfathomable 10 years ago, creating new products and opportunities. A trend that will only continue at pace. Yet AI is not self-sufficient - it relies upon a steady supply of high-quality data to power it, in the form of trusted journalism, books, music, art and photography. Without the human ingenuity behind these, AI becomes a snake eating its own tail.
In Britain, we excel at creativity. Our creative sectors are growing at two-and-a-half times the rate of the rest of the economy - contributing £146billion every year. That's a national success story which politicians should be proud of and guard with the greatest of care. So you can imagine the profound horror and sense of betrayal last year which met the Labour government's proposals to sell our creative sectors down the river. Ministers tabled proposals to give AI firms complete freedom to harvest creative works unless the owners specifically opted out - effectively making mass property theft a legal default.
And to pour salt on the wound, they admitted that they actually had no idea how such an opt out would work in practice.
Hungry for growth at any cost, politicians had been hoodwinked by Big Tech giants and US lobbyists - convinced a 'simple' change to copyright law would yield billions of dollars of investment in UK data centres. Thankfully, the British public were not fooled. In a consultation on the plans, just 3% of respondents gave the proposals a thumbs up.
Thankfully, after more than a year of dither and delay, last week Keir Starmer performed his latest U-turn and dropped this approach. A reset announced by Technology Secretary Liz Kendall backed the creative sectors which she praised as "the best in the world, and part of what makes us proud to be British".
Welcome words but, buried in the small print, was evidence that the threat to our world leading creative sectors has not entirely gone away. The door has been left ajar for other mechanisms to weaken copyright - the legal protection which underpins the success of our British creative industries - to be revived.
New exceptions for "science and research" or "commercial research" - cited in documents as possible options to take forward - could be even more harmful. The government says they have listened, but they must continue to be challenged by other parties (and their own backbenchers) until they get this right. The answer to this problem - one entirely of the government's own making - is surprisingly straightforward.
The government should get out of the way and let the free markets do what they do best; innovate and generate wealth. Supporting both job creation and protecting incomes.
By swiftly dismissing other copyright exceptions, ministers would give the creators and AI firms the certainty they need to strike licensing deals for use of their works.
These deals are already being struck. But to scale up, a full throttle licensing market needs certainty about the rules of the game.
The principle of fair payment for a product or service is not hard to understand. Why is it so hard for ministers to commit to this by backing our gold standard copyright regime? The answer surely lies in pressure from Big Tech and the might of the US administration.
We cannot allow Silicon Valley to be gatekeepers of British enterprise or be beguiled by vague promises of investment which may never materialise.
Brexit gave us the freedom to set our own rules, and we must do so in a way that benefits British businesses.
The UK is already the third-largest AI market globally, built on British talent and foreign investment. We do not need to trade away our cultural assets to meet the government's ambition for the UK to have the fastest AI adoption in the G7.
Ministers must choose a path which upholds the national interest by generating sustainable economic growth and prosperity. A national success story in our creative sectors and tech innovation is waiting to be written. If only our Labour government would allow us to get on and write it.
