Is this what we want? That’s the question that more than 1,000 leading musicians – including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, and Hans Zimmer – are asking of the UK’s plans to let AI companies run rampant through their copyrighted material. It’s also the name of a new album recorded by these artists, featuring almost an hour of silence and ambient noise.
Far from a tribute to John Cage’s ‘4’33”’, the 12 tracks on Is This What We Want? are meant to represent the vanishing role of human musicians in a future dictated by proposed AI policy in the UK. The track listing spells out: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”
The project is created in response to a government plan to let AI companies train their algorithms on the copyrighted work of creative professionals (also known as data scraping) using a new copyright exemption. The plan includes an option for artists to “opt-out”, but this has been widely criticised as unfair, unreasonable, and unreliable.
“The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them,” says Ed Newton-Rex, the British composer and former AI exec who envisioned the protest album. “It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary: the UK can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus.”
Each track on the record is simply attributed to “1,000 UK artists”. The so-called co-writers are also said to include Elton John, Annie Lennox, Tori Amos, the Clash, and a number of classical musicians. Many more musicians have been outspoken about the use of AI in their rapidly changing industry, particularly when it comes to issues of copyright or job replacement.
Bush says she recorded one of the tracks – which were made in lifeless music studios and performance spaces – in her own studio. “The government’s willingness to agree to these copyright changes shows how much our work is undervalued and that there is no protection for one of this country’s most important assets: music,” she says in a statement on the silent demonstration. “In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?”