‘Make it Fair’: The government seems more interested in keeping tech firms happy than protecting our £120bn creative industry - Richard Midgley

Frustratingly, any pushback against AI exploitation gets twisted into being anti-AI, with critics branded as Luddites. As writer Kate Mosse pointed out, if you want to be paid for your work, you’re labelled old-fashioned and unwilling to embrace technology. But this isn’t about rejecting AI, it’s about not letting AI steamroll human creativity and livelihoods.

AI does not generate ideas independently. It relies entirely on human creativity. Collecting and regurgitating pre-existing human-made work. And yet, AI companies are raking in billions while threatening the livelihoods of the very people they depend on. At a time when the creative industries are already struggling with underfunding, AI threatens to worsen financial instability. A recent article highlighted how even TV producers with 20 years’ experience are taking up shelf-stacking just to survive.

The UK’s creative industry is worth over £120bn a year, yet the government seems more interested in keeping tech firms happy than protecting the people who drive that success.

AI was sold as a utopian dream, allowing us to outsource boring, repetitive tasks to free up time for creativity and meaningful work. Instead, it’s being used to replace creative work entirely. AI-generated content is often soulless and derivative, lacking the intangible essence that makes art meaningful.

As Nick Cave eloquently put it in response to an AI-generated song mimicking his style: “Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche—it is the opposite… It requires my humanness.”

Nowhere is this more evident than in advertising. The most iconic campaigns, Apple’s ‘1984’, Guinness’ ‘Surfer’ and Cadbury’s ‘Gorilla’ resonated with audiences because they tapped into something real, something human.

AI struggles to replicate that emotional depth. Research from System1 consistently shows that emotionally driven campaigns outperform purely data-driven ones. AI may offer efficiency, but efficiency does not equal effectiveness.

What’s the point of efficiency if all it does is churn out forgettable slop? Can AI do humour? Empathy? Sarcasm? Of course it can’t, that’s why it’s great at creating imagery, but not so great at creating ideas.

The fundamental question remains: why is AI being prioritised over the protection of human creativity?

The 'Make it Fair' campaign isn’t about rejecting AI, it’s about rejecting exploitation. If the future of creativity is just feeding human-made work into a machine so tech firms can profit, then we’re all getting a raw deal. But I still can’t think who would think that was a good idea.

Richard Midgley is the managing director at Ponderosa.