The Member of Parliament for Corby and East Northamptonshire has told Parliament in a debate on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence that 58% of photographers have already lost work to AI which is “more than £14,000 on average already lost by each professional photographer.”
Lee Barron MP was speaking in a debate held in Westminster Hall which was led by James Frith, the Member of Parliament for Bury North. He told the debate that AI is an ‘exciting power of change’ and that while the debate is not about resisting that change it is about shaping it, determining what comes next, for what and for whom.
Lee Barron, who before entering Parliament was the Regional Secretary of the Trades Union Congress in the Midlands, had prior to the debate hosted a drop-in with Equity, the trade union representing performers and creative practitioners in the UK and the Association of Photographers.
He explained to cross party Members of Parliament that more than 15 billion AI-generated images taken by photographers are out there now, trained by using people’s intellectual property without permission, payment or those people even knowing.
Professional photographers post their pictures on their websites and then AI companies send in ‘web crawlers’ to scrape them with no consent, no warning.
“That is data theft, plain and simple.” Lee Barron MP said. “It breaks data protection laws, and we should call it out for what it is, because once scraped, they are gone—people cannot retrieve their property.”
“We would not allow that in any other sector—it is not right.” he continued. “We would not let someone steal our tools, so why would we let them steal our work, our face or our voice?”
“That is robbery. Actors are finding their faces and voices turning up in ads and games that they never agreed to. AI watches people work and copies them. No one should lose their job and their creative talent to a machine that is trained on their own work—it is your face, it is your voice, it is your style, and it should be your choice. Consent must come first—no yes, no use.”
As the debate continued the Member of Parliament for Corby and Easy Northamptonshire encouraged Parliament to ‘get it fixed.’
“Let us give working people the rights they need in the AI age. We have copyright law for a reason, so let us update and strengthen it.” he said.
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