Artificial Intelligence is coming for creatives, the question is how to make it fair

New Statesman​

17 hours ago

Photo by Shutterstock
We have never lived in a moment in history before with as much written 'content' available to us as now. However, the livelihoods of writers have become more precarious. Over the past 15 years, the average earnings for writers have fallen by 66 percent to £7000 a year. Freelance writers still struggle to get fair contracts for their work and now have the potential threat of generative AI to the sustainability of their profession.
These were the challenges discussed at a roundtable titled 'How do we create a sustainable future for freelance journalism?' convened by the New Statesman, sponsored by the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) and chaired by Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford. The discussion was held under Chatham House rules, so the identity of contributors will be anonymised throughout.
The opening speaker talked about their experience as a journalist and freelance journalist and added the point that there are broader threats to media, highlighting the closure of Voice of America and cuts to the BBC World Service. They highlighted the idea of a Freelance Commissioner to champion freelancers and represent them in government, something that has been a longstanding campaign demand from the ALCS. Ed. Soon after the Roundtable, the government announced a Freelance Champion as part of the Creative Industries Sector Plan.
'We are still in a world in transition where being a journalist is a very difficult career to pursue if you want to make a living,' said one attendee. They pointed out that there have been efforts by government and parliament to address the pressures facing journalism, including the creation of the Local Democracy Reporting Service and the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024. However, they added, there needs to be more done in order to ensure the vital role of journalism in supporting democracy and that the competition authorities need to take more account of freelancers when they are enforcing the law with Big Tech.
'Good luck if you're a young person, or if you're from a diverse community and are trying to break into these professions,' said one person, adding that, 'unless you've got independent wealth or connections, it's very difficult.'
'The pressure on the employer has been increasingly towards engaging freelancers because it basically costs less,' an attendee said. They speculated that freelancers may, in the short-term, be able to deploy AI to help them get money owed to them, but that in the longer-term there needs to be a collective agreement and collective society to get that money in and distributed to creators.
One freelancer present outlined the challenges they faced in keeping track of what happens to their work, how it is used and securing payment for that. Some types of freelancers, such as photographers, are in a better position to ensure that control. They added that graduates are more likely to need to freelance at the start of a career in journalism, but working without the support of things such as sick pay is not an option for many people, which in turn feeds into problems of underrepresentation in journalism. 'Our rates are not going up, but our costs are up, and [there is a] cost of living crisis, we are stuck, and that's why we're seeing so many people just reaching this crunch, where they're taking that decision to leave the industry,' they said.
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Another participant highlighted the specific financial problems facing freelance journalists who work on long-term investigations and have to pay for their own equipment, training, and associated costs. 'If you're an investigative freelance journalist, the infrastructure isn't really there,' they said.
An attendee outlined the challenges facing freelance journalists at different career stages. For younger journalists there is a 'perpetual internship culture' that prevents them establishing themselves on a topic or area. Established journalists rarely make enough from journalism alone to make a living and so have to develop a portfolio of other types of work. Journalism has also become centralised, depriving opportunities for freelancers based outside of London.
'There's not a single publication that has been transparent about the deals that they have struck around AI and what they're charging for their information in news to be used,' commented one person. They said that, against that power, it may take a long time for freelancers to be in a position to challenge it themselves. They added that there was an increasingly blurred line between journalists and influencers who comment on the news.
'What we actually need as freelancers, we need the copyright laws that already exist strengthened and made more accessible for us,' an attendee said. Currently, they said, their only recourse is court, which would carry a huge financial risk if the was unsuccessful. Applying that to generative AI would be even more challenging for them.
A speaker from the tech industry responded that less than one percent of publishers have struck any type of deal with AI companies to use their content. They said they were 'disappointed' in how the industry has thus far failed to come together to come up with a solution to these problems. 'We invented our system to get to that collective action, to have an independent attribution model that could be integrated,' they said. However, they said it was really difficult to try and make agreements with all the large number of rights holders, but they were optimistic that this could be resolved with collective action.
'What we are creating is an AI data licensing marketplace, matching rights holders with AI companies who wants to license that,' explained another tech representative. They agreed that there needed to be collective action and a product solution to the challenge of attribution and licensing. They added that the use case is really important, as they are critical of how the current deals in place are opaque, between big tech and big media, and are not licensing for training.
They continued that there are a set of AI developers who are mining data for specific use cases that need to be enabled too. For news, they added, revenues were traditionally made up of advertising, readers and licensing, and this is very much about bringing licensing into the 21st century. They felt efforts in other countries had yet to produce a sustainable solution, but that there was learning from them as to how 'the value of the concept is important, getting the right relationships is important, doing that structure is important.'
An attendee explained that the ALCS and the NUJ have recently worked together to create SCOOP in order to offer genuinely beneficial collective agreements between those representing freelance journalists and companies securing commercial returns from the online secondary use of their works, including news scraping and training AI.
Attendees did feel there was an important place for legislation, and an imminent need for it. One attendee highlighted that Germany, Australia and New Zealand have laws that have enabled collective bargaining, and that Europe is ahead on protections on both AI and the digital distribution of content. Another person highlighted the importance of getting the incentive structures right for tech companies, so that they can be compelled to comply with rules, for example, on attribution.
'A lot of it is to do with politics, not necessarily mechanisms, but the political context which they [policymakers] are seeing the future,' said one person. They added that while legislators around are keen to regulate AI, it is still one among many competing priorities.
'We will struggle if we wait for specific regulation. I think we have to try voluntary measures, but I think we're going to need regulatory backup,' added another attendee. They pointed to collective licensing models, which the ALCS and others are already part of, as a solution for remunerating creators through a transparent and non-profit organisation.
'In order to get the right treatment, we need to get the right diagnosis, and before that, we need to identify the symptoms,' an attendee observed, 'we as freelancers, have different symptoms to news organisations. We really need to find those better before we work out what the treatment is'
It is clear that AI technology will continue to be developed and deployed. There are already some solutions that can help creators get the remuneration and value they deserve, but in the medium and longer term there need to be larger policy interventions to regulate the technology and ensure quality and reliable information is available to citizens. That could include strengthening copyright laws, taxes on technology companies to fund specific services such as public service broadcasting, and regulation to support collective bargaining between creators and tech companies.
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