“It's already too late. This theft has already been performed and is unstoppable”: Queen’s Brian May piles on board the anti-AI bandwagon

The volume of anti-AI sentiment within music is becoming deafening. We’ve already reported about the increasing cavalcade of stars who are speaking out (including major artists no longer familiar with public speaking) and those big voices just keep on coming.

Now Queen’s Sir Brian May has delivered his take – via UK outlet The Daily Mail, an entity so outraged by the advent of AI that it has organised its own campaign against the current (Labour) government's plans regarding the issue.

The Daily Mail is, of course, famous for panicking its readers with petty upset and far-right surprises but its campaign against the unwelcome intrusion of AI into music would appear to go beyond class, culture and political divides.

I Want To Break Free

The enterprise comes fuelled by the Labour government’s apparently laissez-faire attitude to AI and its (mostly overseas) owners being able to loot (aka use) British music in the training of their systems to then – it’s assumed – barf out countless clones.

Under new copyright legislation, AI’s owners would be able to take and use anything out on the open net to train their algorithms. There is an option to ‘opt out’ but right-thinking folks know that to attempt to do so – to effectively chase the use of your work down every internet rabbit hole to every internet entity and tell them ‘no’ – will, of course, be impossible and unenforceable.

Instead, these major movers in music (and The Daily Mail) want the ‘no’ upfront, with the potential for deals to be struck afterwards instead.

And while it’s easy to once again finger the paper for scaremongering and noble cause reappropriation, they’ve certainly succeeded in getting some big names on board.

Not least of which is Sir Brian May who spoke to the paper regarding his personal concerns – backing up the opinions of the many who’ve so far expressed their outrage.

“My fear is that it's already too late – this theft has already been performed and is unstoppable,” worries Sir Brian. “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.

“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.”

Another One Bites The Dust

We’re therefore in an interesting standoff, with government plans increasingly under scrutiny. But what remains unclear above all the noise is exactly what these big names actually want.

It’s clear (and sensible) that these major movers in music want (and deserve) to be paid for the use of their music, if indeed it’s being used to train AI as they (righteously) suspect. And it’s this opt in/opt out ‘you can’t use my music’ stance that’s their biggest (only?) weapon.

But is their ultimate aim to – by denying AI the use of their music – permanently prevent AI from ever getting smart enough to be able to accurately recreate ‘quality’ music (and thereby instigate the destruction of the music industry)?

Or is this just another demand from the big voices that they get paid again?

i.e. IF AI’s owners WERE forced into a corner by the legal shutdown that the big names are crying out for, and WERE they then able to dream up some kind of ‘fractions of pennies per process’ new revenue stream heading the artist’s way – as happened with music streaming – would the stars be satiated and sign on the line?

In short, is this about the future of music… or getting paid?

It seems that, in that regard, the cavalcade of names, big and small, may have differing opinions.