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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The UK's AI minister just made a big and important admission on AI & copyright, which creatives around the country will celebrate: "It is currently illegal to develop a frontier large language model based on the transformer architecture given the copyright position that we have in this country”.

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Last year, creatives across the UK fought back against the government’s unfair plans to sacrifice them at the altar of AI - and won. We should all get behind creatives in Australia as they now fight the same fight on the other side of the world. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

If the Australian government weakens copyright law at the behest of AI companies, they would be legalising the theft of the work of the entire world's creatives on their soil.

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

This new lawsuit from Universal & Sony against Suno is big, because it makes an argument many have made previously outside of court: that training on ‘synthetic data’ should not get you off the hook for copying people’s work for AI training. 🧵 1/5

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

“We trained GPT-3 on pirated stuff! No sharing that!” Astonishing admissions in these newly released documents in Authors Guild v OpenAI. www.courtlistener.com/docket/67810...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

It’s clear that a number of governments are going to try to force through laws that hand creatives’ work to AI companies, on the grounds of ‘national security’. But this is an abysmally weak justification for stripping away creatives’ rights. Two core reasons why: 🧵 1/5

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Suno is moving to models trained on music it has licensed. This is a big win for musicians, and likely wouldn’t have happened without the lawsuits of the last couple of years. But they say the new models were still trained on “Suno user data”. This is worrying. 🧵 1/4

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

AI music company Suno has been sued again - this time by the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN). SOCAN shared examples of Suno’s output. Here is one: www.socan.com/socan-ai/ai-...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

This is a full-scale assault on creators' rights. Countries should stand up to the current US administration, and refuse to legalise the theft of creators' work to benefit AI companies. www.reuters.com/business/med...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

I got hold of the Sovereign AI Unit's 'Outline Business Case', the document used to get the UK government's sign-off on initial funding, via an FOI request. A *lot* is redacted, but some things jumped out: 1. No environmental assessments 1/n

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Hugging Face, which is being acquired by Nvidia for $13 billion, hosts and distributes large datasets of copyrighted books without permission. 🧵 1/3

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

This is a great piece on the UK's AI Security Institute (AISI), and is well worth a read. It is one of the first articles I've seen that calls for much more scrutiny of how AISI operates, including calling for a Parliamentary inquiry. 🧵 1/7

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

This is the right call and should be enacted globally. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Oh wow - Reuters found the GitHub record of the attempt by AI models being tested by the UK's AI Security Institute to deploy malware in an open-source project. Pretty sure these actions are illegal under the Computer Misuse Act in the UK. 🧵 1/2

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

It’s somewhat good that Spotify will start labelling ‘AI personas’. But it still refuses to label the one thing that actually matters: AI-generated music. 🧵 1/4

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

“[AI] risks becoming an iron curtain that comes down between a young person and their potential for thinking… it risks halting learning before it can take flight.” Moving and important article by the great Katherine Rundell. Please read! www.theguardian.com/books/ng-int...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

Pleased to see the Sovereign AI Fund’s lack of copyright due diligence make it into Private Eye. It would be easy for Sov AI to check whether AI companies train on copyrighted work without permission before backing them with UK taxpayer money. So why don’t they?

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Big news today: GERMAN COURT RULES AI MUSIC FIRM SUNO BROKE COPYRIGHT RULES Suno "has to provide information on illicit revenue", and "will have to pay damages". Wow. www.reuters.com/world/german...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Countries should impose astronomical fines on AI companies whose models hack companies within their borders. Countries without frontier models wonder what they can do to slow the irresponsible and exploitative AI race. This is one thing they could do. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

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Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex

Mae Tang 董美妍 @maetangwriter.com · 29/07/2026

I'm going to write my MP about this right now. It's shameful that the government is cosigning the theft of creatives' work this way.

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Mark O’Neill 🐻 @radiobeartime.com · 29/07/2026

This is a manifest failure of due diligence on the part of DSIT. There are strict rules about accounting for public money which seem to have been ignored. The select committee should call for witnesses to find out who signed this approach off.

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I've confirmed that the UK's new Sovereign AI Fund does no due diligence on whether AI companies use copyrighted work without permission before investing in them. It took me 3 Freedom of Information requests to find this out: 🧵 1/10

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Incredibly important new research published today shows the huge impact AI books are having on real writers’ ability to make a living. Looking at self-published books on Amazon, they found: - 20% of self-published books include substantial AI text - ... 🧵 1/3

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Tuhin Chakrabarty @tuhinchakr.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

🚨 New paper on AI & Copyright Using @pangram.com full-text AI detection, we study self-published genre fiction on Amazon, 2023–26. Amazon is flooded w/ books with substantial AI text. They earn real 💰 & crowd out non-AI books. w/ @dhillonp.bsky.social @xinyuel.bsky.social & Jane Ginsburg (1/n) 🧵

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

The practice of AI companies secretly buying millions of old books (some vanishingly rare), scanning them for AI training, then destroying them, epitomises everything that is wrong with today's exploitative AI industry. 🧵 1/2

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

The UK government refuses to release the register of interests of the Prime Minister's main adviser on AI, depsite her being an ex-OpenAI exec. There is obviously a possibility she owns OpenAI shares, and it is vital the public knows whether or not she does. Why will they not release it?

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

Sony has just sued AI music company Udio for a second time. www.theverge.com/tech/968375/... 🧵 1/3

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Shareholders are suing big tech execs for taking on the massive legal risk of training AI on copyrighted work without permission, and I’m so here for it news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/big-t...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

We urgently need enforced disclosure of AI usage in TV shows & other media. These AI models use stolen work to displace human labour. It is reasonable to demand disclosures that let you avoid media made with them. variety.com/2026/biz/new...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

Today is a huge win for creatives around the world, as Australia makes it clear it will not bow to pressure from AI companies to legalise the theft of creatives’ work. 🧵 1/3

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Huge new class action lawsuit filed by big publishers and authors against Google this week over AI training. It accuses Google of taking millions of books / articles provided to them for use only in Google Books, Google Play Books, and Google Scholar, and secretly using them to train LLMs. 🧵 1/4

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

you're saying openai built their products using work stolen from someone else? surely not

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Stephen Cox - "funny, raunchy, romantic, satisfyingly twisted" @stephencoxauthor.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Australia willing to throw the world's creatives under a bus for data centres. I'm going to ask my publishers to withdraw sales in Australia if they do, and I'll do the same for my self pub books (or raise price to £250 if I can't)

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

If the Australian Government accedes to Anthropic's demands and creates a copyright exception for AI training, the British Government should file a dispute at the WTO. www.afr.com/companies/in... 🧵 1/n

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Hugging Face has just been sued for alleged copyright infringement for hosting & distributing copyrighted images, used for AI training. 🧵 1/3

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

🚨 AI companies are trying to use their vast, ill-gotten wealth to buy a change to the law in Australia. They say they will invest in data centers *if* the Australian government hands them the work of Australian creatives. This is a grotesque abuse of power. 🧵 1/3

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

🚨 Google continues to lobby the UK government to hand the work of the country's creatives to big tech companies for free. 🧵 1/3

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

After the Chair of the UK's Sovereign AI Fund called me a troll and blocked me, I'm pleased to hear that the UK government understands that I "would have found [his] tone abrupt or discourteous", and that they "have discussed this with Mr Wise". 🧵 1/6

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

RouteNote, a platform that lets you distribute your music to Spotify etc., is automatically opting its users into an AI licensing deal with Meta. They say “This is your choice”, and give you 14 days to opt out - but lots of users will miss this email & therefore miss the chance to opt out. 🧵 1/2

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

An important point for musicians to be aware of: If your music is *not* included in the datasets the Atlantic shared, that doesn't mean it hasn't been used for AI training. 🧵 1/3

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

Quick FAQ for the many musicians finding out today that their music may have been scraped for AI training ⬇️ 🧵 1/7

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

The Atlantic just released a tool that lets you see if your music has been scraped for AI training. Recordings I sang on in King's College Choir are in there. So is the music of millions of other musicians. Check it here: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

99 authors just sued Anthropic, accusing them of pirating books to train AI. The lawsuit also names 2 Anthropic founders: Dario Amodei & Ben Mann. (It is established fact that Anthropic downloaded millions of pirated books, & that Ben Mann personally did some of this.) The lawsuits keep coming.

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

2 months ago, the UK's Sovereign AI Fund announced that it was giving Odyssey taxpayer-funded compute. Today, Odyssey raised $310 million. Call me old-fashioned, but I don't think we should be diverting UK taxpayers' money to US-headquartered AI companies... 🧵 1/2

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

impossible to see this coming www.telegraph.co.uk/business/202...

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molly taft @mollytaft.com · 16/06/2026

NEW: the US government intervened Monday on behalf of xAI in a lawsuit over its gas turbines, claiming that the company needs to run the turbines in order to power Grok, which is "vital" for national security lots of wild stuff in the filing:

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DOJ Lawyers Argue xAI Is ‘Vital’ for National Security in NAACP Lawsuit

In a bid to dismiss a lawsuit over xAI's polluting gas turbines, the Justice Department claimed the company is integral to military operations—including the Iran War.

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Meta tried to dismiss a lawsuit that claims they torrented 1000s of adult films for AI training. The motion to dismiss was just denied; judge said “Plaintiffs have plausibly alleged that Defendant is liable for direct, vicarious, and contributory copyright infringement”.

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Ed Newton-Rex @ednewtonrex.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

Tried out the UK government’s official new AI chatbot for jobseekers. Its advice: work in the US. Quick, which public service can we add AI to next

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