Intellectual Property: Artificial Intelligence
Lee Barron Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) on securing such an important debate. To me, it is about culture, creativity and human talent, and about people reaching their full potential in life and making sure that that is not taken away from them by things that can happen. This morning, I hosted a drop-in with Equity, and I met the Association of Photographers. They are worried, and rightly so: 58% of Association of Photography members say that they have already lost work to AI. That is more than £14,000 on average already lost by each professional photographer.
That is not work going; that is work being taken by generative AI. More than 15 billion AI-generated images are out there now, trained by using people’s intellectual property without permission, payment or those people even knowing. Photographers post their pictures on their websites, then AI companies send in web crawlers to scrape them—no consent, no warning. That is data theft, plain and simple. It breaks data protection laws, and we should call it out for what it is, because once scraped, they are gone—people cannot retrieve their property.
We would not allow that in any other sector—it is not right. We would not let someone steal our tools, so why would we let them steal our work, our face or our voice? That is robbery. Actors are finding their faces and voices turning up in ads and games that they never agreed to. AI watches people work and copies them. No one should lose their job and their creative talent to a machine that is trained on their own work—it is your face, it is your voice, it is your style, and it should be your choice. Consent must come first—no yes, no use.
Let us fix this. Let us give working people the rights they need in the AI age. We have copyright law for a reason, so let us update and strengthen it. Tech companies cannot just take—there must be rules and no opt-outs. There have to be protections and there has to be fair pay. Protect our artists, our voices and our jobs. This is not science fiction; it is happening right now, and we need to act now before irreparable damage is done.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lee Barron Excerpts(5 months, 1 week ago)
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The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. We are committed to championing human rights, including the right to freedom of religion and belief. I join him in marking Red Wednesday, an important moment to show support for all those persecuted around the world for their religion and belief. Today, we will light up Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office buildings in the UK in red in support of that. Envoy roles are under consideration and will be decided on in due course.
Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)
Harshita Brella was killed and found in the boot of her car as it was taken from her home in Corby on 14 November. This tragic murder left a community shocked and scared, and it is being investigated by the police. Harshita was protected by a domestic violence protection order that lasted 28 days. It was not renewed. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that all must be done to reassure the community and bring the perpetrator to justice? Further, does she agree that in some circumstances domestic violence protection orders should last longer than 28 days, when the victims are most vulnerable?
The Deputy Prime Minister
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this case. My thoughts are with Harshita’s family in this horrifying set of circumstances, where Harshita should have been protected and felt protected. The Government are committed to halving violence against women and girls. We continue to do our work, hopefully across the House, to make sure that we can end the circumstances Harshita faced and we can stop this kind of barbaric action.