The UK’s prime minister must decide between supporting the nation’s creative industries or gamble everything on AI, Getty Images chief executive has warned.
The CEO of the image library, Craig Peters, has spoken out on behalf of the creative and media sector, which has seen professionals fearing the rise of AI such as DALL-E 3 on their jobs, and a growing anger towards the harvesting of their material for “training data” in AI companies.
Getty Images is currently suing an AI image generator in the UK and US for copyright infringement.
“When I look at the UK, probably about 10% of its GDP is sitting in the creative industries, whether that’s movies, music, television. I think making that trade-off is risky,” said Peters.
“If I’m in the UK, betting on AI, less than a quarter point of GDP within the UK today, significantly less than the creative industries, is a bit of a perplexing trade-off,” he added.
In 2023, the UK government set out to “overcome barriers that AI firms and users currently face” in the use of copyrighted material, supporting AI companies to help them train their models.
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Parliamentary under secretary state for AI and intellectual property, Viscount Camrose, told a House of Commons committee last week: “We will take a balanced and pragmatic approach to the issues that have been raised, which helps secure the UK’s position as a world leader in AI, whilst supporting our thriving creative sectors.”
Commenting on the topic, deputy CEO of technology marketing agency, Inspired Thinking Group, said in defence of AI: “The AI boom isn’t slowing down anytime soon and, for the creative industries, that means we either embrace it or get left behind.”
“Understandably, the rapid pace of change has brought up concerns among the sector, especially with regards to content being used for training data, but the reality is that tools such as Generative AI can greatly ease the burden on creatives.”
Sjuul van der Leeuw, CEO of marketing automation platform, said: “Although doubts remain over AI, collaboration between government, regulators and industry can ensure marketers can safely adopt AI and innovate their marketing operations through aspects such as analysing first-party data to inform campaigns.
“It is not a case of creative industries versus Generative AI, they should work alongside each other to unlock the power of creatives.”
