Music stars release silent album in protest against UK AI copyright plans

The album, titled Is This What We Want, was launched on Tuesday and features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, as backlash against the plan grows in the United Kingdom. The proposed changes would allow AI developers to train their models on any material to which they have lawful access, and would require creators to proactively opt out to stop their work from being used. The emergence of AI has posed a threat to the creative industry, including music, raising legal and ethical questions on a new technological platform that could produce its own output without paying creators of original content. Bush and other writers and musicians denounced the proposals in UK law as a "wholesale giveaway" to Silicon Valley in a letter to The Times newspaper. Ed Newton-Rex, organiser of the project, said musicians were "united in their thorough condemnation of this ill-thought-through plan".