New AI rules could spell end for Wallace & Gromit
Wallace & Gromit's future is in jeopardy, the studio behind the British screen favourite has warned, if ministers press ahead with controversial new artificial intelligence rules.
Sean Clarke, managing director of Aardman Animations, said the Bristol-based animation company would struggle to produce more content if the government allowed tech companies to freely use copyrighted material to train artificial intelligence models unless creative industries 'opt out' of the process.
'If it was an opt-out system, I struggle to think how we would be able to do any more Wallace & Gromit because of the money we would have to spend on trying to police it,' Clarke said. 'We've worked incredibly hard to create value in the intellectual property and it's just being diminished.'
• Wallace & Gromit studio boss: We're betting on TikTok for growth
The employee-owned company behind Shaun the Sheep and Chicken Run already spends about £300,000 a year on copyright protection. 'It would go through the roof if we had to then put a team into place to deal with every single platform that decides to use our copyright to opt out,' he said.
Campaigners have sharply criticised the government's proposal, which would allow AI developers to scrape copyrighted material for training purposes unless creators take action to exclude their works. Book publishers called the approach 'untested and unevidenced' and Baroness Kidron, a crossbench peer, said she was very disappointed. Sir Elton John described the government as 'absolute losers' and said he felt 'incredibly betrayed' over plans to exempt technology firms from copyright laws.
Over in the US this week, Disney and NBCUniversal became the first Hollywood players to take a legal swing at Midjourney, a generative AI company that they claimed had stolen their copyrighted characters.
Aardman said the changes could strike at the heart of its business model, of which rights are a critical part for financing and brand development. 'When I go out to raise money, we're raising money against rights. They're already non-exclusive because they've been given access to multiple different platforms,' Clarke said.
The Aardman 'lifer', who has been at the company since 1996, compared the situation to software licensing: 'Can you imagine the furore if I said, 'You need to opt out of me using your licence for free'?'
He added that Aardman had started to see some platforms use its productions via AI. The studio said AI also threatens the merchandising arm of the business. 'A lot of what you do in animation is you raise money with regard to those rights being seen on T-shirts and different things.
'If you make it easier for people to type in 'create me a Wallace & Gromit T-shirt' … you can just create it, print it, sell it. We've got to then chase down all of those people. It is really scary and I hope the government's listening.'
Although Aardman supports innovation and is excited generally by the future of AI, Clarke said the lack of global alignment made enforcement harder. 'If the US also decides to take that stance, then it just means those platforms set up in the US, and then we still have a similar issue.'
Aardman Animations was founded in 1976 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton. After graduating they moved to Bristol, where they created Morph for the children's programme Take Hart. Nick Park, director and animator, joined in 1985 while he was working on a student film, A Grand Day Out, the first Wallace & Gromit tale. Shaun the Sheep marks its 30th anniversary this year.
A government spokesman said:'We recognise how pressing these issues are and we truly want to solve them. As you would rightly expect, we are taking the time to consider the 11,500 responses to our consultation, but no changes to copyright law will be considered unless we're completely satisfied they work for creators.
'The technology secretary has also been clear the government does not have a preferred option, all options remain on the table and next steps will be set out in due course.'
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