Sir Paul McCartney has recorded a “silent” track in protest of the UK government’s AI copyright stance.
The 83-year-old Beatles legend’s offering is set to be released as a bonus track on the physical copy of the compilation album Is This What We Want? – which was initially released digitally earlier this year and contains silent recordings from empty recording studios to highlight the importance of human contribution in music making.
More than 1,000 artists – including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and Annie Lennox – contributed to the album.
The tracklisting for Is This What We Want? spells out: “The British government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies.”
Wuthering Heights hitmaker Kate, 67, said in a statement: “In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?”
The physical album will arrive on December 8.
All of the profits will benefit the charity Help Musicians – which offers a broad range of support to musicians in times of crisis.
Ed Newton-Rex, who curated the album, said: “The government must commit to not handing the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies for free. Doing so would be hugely damaging to our world-leading creative industries, and is totally unnecessary, only benefiting overseas tech giants. It should listen to Paul McCartney and the 1,000 other musicians who took part in this album, and resist calls to legalise music theft from the big tech lobby.”
Macca was also among 400 artists who signed an open letter to Britain’s Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer calling for their works to protected against AI learning models.
The likes of McCartney, Sir Elton John, Dua Lipa, and Coldplay protested the government’s proposal to make creatives “opt out” of having their work used to train AI models.
Macca warned that artists will be ripped off by this approach.
He told the BBC earlier this year: “You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it.
“And anyone who wants can just rip it off.”
Referencing Beatles classic Yesterday, he continued: “The truth is, the money’s going somewhere.
“Somebody’s getting paid, so why shouldn’t it be the guy who sat down and wrote Yesterday?”
He had the following message for the Labour government: “We are the people, you’re the Government.
“You’re supposed to protect us.
“That’s your job.
“So you know, if you’re putting through a Bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them.”