Image by Garry Knight, from Wikimedia Commons
1,000 Artists Release Silent Album To Oppose AI Copyright
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
More than 1,000 musicians, including Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn, and Cat Stevens, have released a silent album titled Is This What We Want? to protest proposed UK government changes to copyright law.
In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!
- Artists fear AI firms will use copyrighted work without permission under proposed UK law.
- Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, and Elton John oppose the UK’s AI copyright exemption plans.
- The UK government claims its consultation balances AI development with creative rights protection.
The album, featuring recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, aims to highlight concerns that AI companies could freely train their models on copyrighted music without explicit permission from artists.
The UK government is consulting on a policy that would allow AI developers to use online creative content unless rights holders actively opt out. Critics argue that this provision places the burden on artists to prevent unauthorized use of their work rather than requiring AI companies to obtain prior consent, as reported by BBC .
“The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies,” spells out the 12-track album’s listing, as noted by AP .
Composer and AI developer Ed Newton-Rex, who spearheaded the project, warned of the potential consequences. “The government’s proposal would hand the life’s work of the country’s musicians to AI companies, for free, letting those companies exploit musicians’ work to outcompete them,” he said, as reported by The Guardian .
“It is a plan that would not only be disastrous for musicians, but that is totally unnecessary: the UK can be leaders in AI without throwing our world-leading creative industries under the bus,” he added.
The album, available on streaming platforms such as Spotify, features contributions from renowned artists, including Paul McCartney, Elton John, and Hans Zimmer, as well as rising musicians. All proceeds will be donated to Help Musicians , a UK charity supporting artists.
Kate Bush, one of the contributors, voiced her concerns about the future of the music industry in a statement: “In the music of the future, will our voices go unheard?,”as reported by The Guardian.
The protest is part of a wider backlash from the creative community. Actors Julianne Moore, authors Val McDermid and Richard Osman, and members of The Clash and Radiohead have also spoken out against the proposed changes, as noted by BBC.
A letter published in The Times and signed by 34 leading cultural figures, including Andrew Lloyd Webber, Ed Sheeran, and Tom Stoppard, accused the government of handing creative rights to Big Tech. The proposal “represent a wholesale giveaway of rights and income from the UK’s creative sectors to Big Tech,” the letter stated.
A government spokesperson defended the consultation, stating that “as it stands, the UK’s current regime for copyright and AI is holding back the creative industries, media and AI sector from realising their full potential – and that cannot continue,” as reported by The Guardian.
“That’s why we have been consulting on a new approach that protects the interests of both AI developers and rights holders and delivers a solution which allows both to thrive,” he added.
With the consultation closing Tuesday, the battle over AI and copyright intensifies, as artists fight to ensure their work remains protected in the age of artificial intelligence.
Image by TechCrunch, from Flickr
AI That Thinks Before It Speaks? Claude 3.7 Sonnet Debuts Hybrid Reasoning
- Written by Kiara Fabbri Former Tech News Writer
- Fact-Checked by Sarah Frazier Former Content Manager
Anthropic has rolled out Claude 3.7 Sonnet, a new version of its AI model that introduces an optional “extended thinking” mode, giving users more control over how the model processes complex tasks.
In a Rush? Here are the Quick Facts!
- The model improves reasoning and problem-solving by allowing self-reflection before answering.
- Extended thinking mode is only available on paid plans.
- Claude Code, a coding assistant, is in limited preview for developers
Anthropic has released Claude 3.7 Sonnet, an updated AI model that introduces hybrid reasoning, allowing users to choose between rapid responses and extended thinking.
This new approach aims to improve problem-solving by enabling the model to take additional time to evaluate and refine its responses when needed.
In standard mode, Claude 3.7 Sonnet functions as an iterative improvement over its predecessor, Claude 3.5 Sonnet. In extended thinking mode, however, the model engages in self-reflection before producing an answer.
Michael Gerstenhaber, Anthropic’s product lead for AI, described the feature as a way for users to balance response time and reasoning depth. “The [user] has a lot of control over the behavior—how long it thinks, and can trade reasoning and intelligence with time and budget” he said, as reported by WIRED .
This process is intended to enhance accuracy in areas requiring multi-step reasoning, such as mathematics, physics, coding, and instruction-following. Users interacting with the model via API can specify a limit on how many tokens it uses to “think,” allowing control over response speed and cost.
WIRED notes that the update also includes a “scratchpad” feature, which makes the model’s reasoning steps visible as it processes a request. This approach is similar to techniques used in other AI models, such as DeepSeek’s.
Anthropic states that Claude 3.7 Sonnet has been optimized for real-world applications rather than competition-style benchmarks. Early testing suggests that the extended reasoning mode improves performance on tasks involving complex codebases, advanced tool use, and full-stack software development.
The model has been evaluated on SWE-bench Verified and TAU-bench, where it reportedly outperforms previous versions, as reported by Anthropic.
CNN Notes that Anthropic has kept the pricing for Claude 3.7 the same as previous models, positioning it below OpenAI’s latest offerings. It costs $3 per million input tokens and $15 per million output tokens, compared to OpenAI’s $15 and $60 for similar tiers.
