Thom Yorke Participates In Supporting Artists' Protests Over AI Company's Unfair Treatment

Rodiohead Vocalist, Thom Yorke (Instagram @radiohead)

JAKARTA - Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke also signed a statement from the creative industry warning artificial intelligence (AI) companies that use their works without permission.

As is known, AI companies need data to develop the models they create. In this case, AI companies use pre-existing works.

Meanwhile, 10,500 artists who signed statements from the creative industry said what AI companies were doing was a big threat and unfair to the artist's livelihoods.

"The use of creative works without permission to train generative AI is a major and unfair threat to the livelihoods of the people behind the work, and should not be allowed," the statement reads, citing The Guardian, Thursday, October 24.

Thousands of creative professionals from the world of literature, music, films, theaters, and television have provided their support for the statement, including Thom Yorke from Radiohead, Bjyun Ulvaeus from ABBA, Robert Smith from The Cure, to composer Max Richter.

Meanwhile, the figures behind the statement are Ed Newton-Rex, a British composer and former AI executive. He said people who make a living from creative works are very concerned about the situation.

"There are three main resources that AI companies need to be creative to build AI models: people, computing, and data. They spend a lot of money on the first two - sometimes one million dollars per technician, and one billion dollars per model. However, they hope to take the third one - training data - for free," said Ed.

Ed himself worked as head of audio at technology firm Stability AI, but resigned last year as the company believed that taking copyrighted content to train an AI model without a license was normal.

"When AI companies call this 'traint data', they demean it. What we are talking about is the work of people - their writings, their art, their music," said Ed again.

Ed Newton-Rex said the number of artists who signed the statement, and the extent of the creative talent they represent, made it clear that the opt-out scheme would be considered very unfair by creators.

The statement was also signed by creative industry organizations and companies including the American Musician Federation, US SAG-AFTRA actor unions, the European Writers Council, and the Universal Music Group.