Queen’s Brian May claims “nobody will be able to afford to make music” if “monstrously arrogant” tech companies continue under UK government’s AI copyright rules
Queen‘s Brian May has put forth his opinion in the ongoing discourse around AI in music.
On Tuesday (February 25), over 1,000 artists including Damon Albarn, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox released a silent album in protest of planned changes to copyright AI laws planned by the UK government.
The effort comes as the UK government is planning to make changes to copyright laws – making it easier for artificial intelligence platforms to develop and train their models using copyrighted work, without needing a license.
They would be allowed to use material online without respecting copyright if doing so for “text or data mining”. This would be allowed unless the rights holders chose to “opt-out”.
May is the latest to join the protest – specifically, as part of a campaign by Daily Mail, as their latest report on it features the guitarist sharing his opinion on the matter.
“My fear is that it’s already too late – this theft has already been performed and is unstoppable, like so many incursions that the monstrously arrogant billionaire owners of Al and social media are making into our lives. The future is already forever changed,” May told Daily Mail.
“But I applaud this campaign to make the public aware of what is being lost. I hope it succeeds in putting a brake on, because if not, nobody will be able to afford to make music from here on in.”
In 2023, May sounded the alarm on what he thought is a “massively scary” presence of AI in music.
“I think by this time next year the landscape will be completely different. We won’t know which way is up,” he said that year. “We won’t know what’s been created by AI and what’s been created by humans.”
Members of Radiohead, Bastille, Jamiroquai, The Clash, and Mystery Jets have all taken part in the silent album, as has Billy Ocean, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, Riz Ahmed, Tori Amos, Hans Zimmer and Max Richter.
The recordings were made in empty studios and performance spaces, while the tracklist spells out: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”
Speaking about the proposed change to UK law, a spokesperson for the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) said that the current regime is “holding back the creative industries, media and AI sector from realising their full potential”, and that the changes being debated would “protect the interests of both AI developers and right holders [to] deliver a solution which allows both to thrive.”
Many artists, however, have warned about how AI using their voice could threaten their careers, and said that it is unrealistic to expect thousands to reach out to “opt-out” of it using their material. A public consultation on the legal changes closed on Tuesday (February 25).
This isn’t the first time that Kate Bush has spoken out against the rise of AI in the music industry. Back in December she became the latest to sign a petition speaking out against artificial intelligence (AI) using artists’ work without their permission.
By that point, it had already gathered more momentum as both Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke and ABBA’s Björn Ulvaeus signed the petition, alongside 11,500 others. More famous faces who got involved included Billy Bragg, Kevin Bacon, Robert Smith, Julianne Moore, Kazuo Ishiguro, Ann Patchett and Rosario Dawson.
Around that same time, Paul McCartney also took a stance, and called for new laws to be put in place to prevent mass copyright theft by AI companies.
The impact of rising AI usage in the music industry is already becoming prominent. Just two months ago a new study shared the stark warning that people working in music are likely to lose a quarter of their income to Artificial Intelligence over the next four years.
This prediction comes as the annual market for generative AI is currently €3billion, and expected to rise to €64billion by 2028.
It has moved into 2025 too, with streaming platform Deezer stating that around 10,000 AI-generated tracks are submitted to the platform daily – making up around 10 per cent of all its music uploads.
Last summer, Nick Cave continued to be a vocal opponent to the rise of AI in music, saying that its usage within the industry is “unbelievably disturbing” and will have a “humiliating effect” on creatives
“Its intent is to completely sidestep the sort of inconvenience of the artistic struggle, going straight to the commodity, which reflects on us, what we are, as human beings, which is just things that consume stuff. We don’t make things anymore. We just consume stuff. It’s frightening,” he said.
The post Queen’s Brian May claims “nobody will be able to afford to make music” if “monstrously arrogant” tech companies continue under UK government’s AI copyright rules appeared first on NME.
Daniel Peters
NME
