Artists, pop stars, musicians, lend me your ears: We can’t stop AI from using our work
Banning AI from training on artists’ work is like banning people from reading, writes music executive Sir Robin Millar in today’s Notebook
AI, copyright and the case for a creative levy
There’s a legal principle often forgotten in political panics: don’t pass laws you can’t enforce. Back in the 1980s, when blank audio and video cassettes were perceived to threaten the music and film industries, there was vigorous lobbying to criminalise home copying. The slogan was ‘Home Taping is Killing Music’, created by the music industry trade body the BPI.
It quickly became absurd. Were the police meant to climb through the bedroom windows to catch teenagers taping Top of the Pops? The compromise was the blank tape levy – a small fee on recording media, redistributed to creators. It wasn’t perfect, and the UK never implemented it fully, but countries like France and Germany still run successful versions today.
We now face the same storm in a digital teacup. AI doesn’t copy works – it trains on them, like a vast statistical reader, scraping patterns across the internet. Banning that is like banning people from learning by reading. But just as before, the scale is new and the unease justified.
Calls for opt-in or opt-out schemes sound principled – but they’re utterly unworkable. The web is too big, the data too dynamic. You can’t build roadblocks fast enough. The result would be gridlock: legal, creative and commercial.
So here is the grown-up answer: a universal AI training levy. Charge the developers, pool the funds and distribute them to rights holders according to market share or measurable cultural contribution. Crucially, we’d still ban copying and plagiarising. But we’d stop criminalising the very thing that will allow the creative industries to continue to grow and thrive for the next hundred years. This isn’t about letting Big Tech off the hook. It’s about protecting creativity in a world where enforcement can’t outrun innovation. AI isn’t going away. Neither is the work of human creators. Let’s make them work together – fairly.
Give Greta a break
Political leaders and commentators still think it’s okay to mock Greta Thunberg. It reminds me of the dumb way politicians in the sixties failed to understand the groundswell of feeling against warmongering articulated by Bob Dylan.
Politicians still imagine they speak for young people and business leaders for their employees. First off: they’re not staff – they’re colleagues. Second: they feel things very deeply. Many of them love Greta. She speaks for millions who have grown up with the threats of climate change and war.
The young have watched her cross the Atlantic in a carbon-neutral boat. They’ve seen her dismantle presidents and prime ministers with a single sentence. Her social media reach dwarfs many governments: 15m followers on Instagram, millions more on X, Tiktok, YouTube. She’s not a celebrity; she’s a force of nature.
If you think there needs to be a company response – from sustainability to social justice – ask your young colleagues to co-create that policy. If you do, you’ll attract and retain the best of the new generation. Your business will thrive. If you don’t, you’ll see your company tumble into the abyss.
Quote of the week
“Only the mediocre are always at their best”
Jean Giraudoux, French dramatist and diplomat
Country music’s surprising renaissance
I’ve worked in the music industry all my adult life. But I’m glad to say it still has the capacity to surprise. Country music, seen as the preserve of barn dancing in suburban village halls, had a bad rep in the UK. But now it’s exploded in the UK faster than you can say “Yee Haw”! Stadium gigs sell out in minutes and country artist Morgan Wallen had the biggest selling album of 2023 – outselling Taylor Swift.
A recommendation
If you’re only going to see one Claude Chabrol film, start with “Le Boucher” – a quiet, slow-burning descent into darkness.
Sir Robin Millar is founder of Blue Raincoat Music and chairman of SCOPE