Angus author calls for artists' work to be protected from illicit AI use

Ex-Carnoustie High School pupil Ed James, formerly an IT consultant, recently discovered all his books had been included illicitly in the pirated data set a big tech company used to train its AI model.

Now the crime writer believes the UK government should protect artists by developing a licensing model whereby tech firms would have to recompense artists for incorporating their work to train AI models.

He also believes creatives who opt into the scheme should receive a royalty payment every time their data is meaningfully used when generating answers to user prompts. Authors across the world have expressed fears that AI models, trained on their books, could soon be able to reproduce work ‘in the style of’ themselves, diminishing demand for their craft.

In February, 1000 musicians, including Annie Lennox and Damon Albarn, released a silent album in protest against AI firms using their work to develop large language models.

The UK Government has consulted on potential changes to copyright law which musicians claim would make it easier for tech firms to train models on copyright material without a licence.

Ed, whose real name is Jamie Thompson, says that while he is not anti-AI and uses it to streamline research, he feels the balance is weighted too far in favour of the tech companies.

He recently released his seventh DCI Rob Marshall novel, ‘Fear of any Kind’, which he says he knows will be mined by AI developers.

He said: “When you train large language models, it is hugely expensive in terms of chip hardware and energy. The big tech firms are paying for that hardware because they want to develop the best models.

“However, the output is only as good as the input. If they want the best output, they need to train their models on the best data so they should pay for that, too.

“Instead, one gigantic company has taken pirate material, while their pivot to AI has added trillions to their market capitalisation. Who is to say the others haven’t done the same?

“A lot of authors are rightly worried. What I think has to be the basic minimum is for AI firms to disclose the works included to train their models to date. Where there has been a use, then there should be compensation to the creators. In future, there should be a licence fee to incorporate the work into the training data sets – and the right to have your work excluded. Thereafter, when that data is used to directly provide some output, there should be a royalty payment.”

When digging into which of his books had been used, Ed admits he was surprised as to how recently developers had assimilated his back catalogue, which spans 11 years. His last book, ‘His Path of Darkness’, was released in September but had been incorporated, along with ‘False Dawn’, released on November 30.

He added: “It is not technology that is evil. The problem comes from massive corporations having too much power without necessary checks and balances – or without permission from data providers. That has to stop. If companies want to ingest quality material, they should pay for that at a fair rate.”