Is This What We Want?
| Is This What We Want? | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Studio album by various artists | |
| Released | 25 February 2025 |
| Genre | Silence |
| Length | Script error: No such module "hms". |
| Label | VMG |
| Producer | Beni Giles |
Is This What We Want? is an album by various artists released on 25 February 2025 through Virgin Music Group. It consists of ambient noise recorded in recording studios, protesting the use of unlicensed copyrighted work to train artificial intelligence. The track titles form the sentence "The British Government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies". Profits from the album go toward the UK charity Help Musicians.[1]
Background
Rapid progress in AI technology, constituting an AI boom, was brought to public attention in the early 2020s by text-to-image models such as DALL-E, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, which were able to generate complex images that convincingly resembled human-made artworks.[2] The proliferation of such image generation algorithms coincided with the release of GPT-3 and development of GPT-4, advanced large language models which produce highly convincing text.[3][4] These transformer-based models designed to create new content from prompts are collectively called generative artificial intelligence, and they require vast sets of training data. This data often consists of text, images, and other media scraped from the web, prompting concerns that the AI products may violate intellectual property rights.[5]
Suno AI and Udio, two AI startups whose products generate music recordings following user-submitted prompts, were sued in 2024 by Sony Music, Warner Music Group, and Universal Music Group, who alleged that the companies used copyrighted recordings in their training data without authorization.[6]
In December 2024, the UK government announced a consultation on copyright and AI, outlining a preferred approach that would see the introduction of a data mining copyright exception with a rights reservation package for rights holders.[7] In the months following the announcement of the consultation, a number of prominent musicians warned of the threat it posed to musicians, including Paul McCartney and Elton John.[8]
Content
The standard version of Is This What We Want? consists of 12 tracks, each uncredited.[1] The tracks consist of ambient noise recorded in recording studios.[1] The track titles form the sentence "The British Government must not legalise music theft to benefit AI companies".[1][9] The album suggests that original music will be silenced if AI companies exploit musicians' intellectual property.[10] It was organised by the British composer Ed Newton-Rex, who had previously worked at Stable Diffusion's parent company, Stability AI.[1][11]
1,000 artists are credited as co-writers, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn, Tori Amos, Annie Lennox, Pet Shop Boys, Billy Ocean, the Clash, Ed O'Brien, Dan Smith, Jamiroquai, Mystery Jets, Hans Zimmer, Imogen Heap, Yusuf/Cat Stevens, Max Richter, the King's Singers, the Sixteen, John Rutter, and James MacMillan.[1][9][11] For the vinyl edition, released in November 2025, Paul McCartney recorded an additional track as the B-side, comprising tape hiss and "indeterminate clattering".[10]
Chart performance
Is This What We Want? debuted at number 38 on the UK Albums Downloads Chart.[12]
Track listing
Script error: No such module "Track listing".
Script error: No such module "Track listing".
See also
- Sleepify by Vulfpeck, an entirely silent album
- 4'33", a John Cage composition which instructs the performers to remain silent
- Music and artificial intelligence
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Milmo, Dan (25 February 2025). "Kate Bush and Damon Albarn among 1,000 artists on silent AI protest album". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/feb/25/kate-bush-damon-albarn-1000-artists-silent-ai-protest-album-copyright. Retrieved 25 February 2025.
- ↑ Coldewey, Devin (5 January 2021). "OpenAI's DALL-E creates plausible images of literally anything you ask it to" (in en-US). https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/05/openais-dall-e-creates-plausible-images-of-literally-anything-you-ask-it-to/.
- ↑ Sagar, Ram (2020-06-03). "OpenAI Releases GPT-3, The Largest Model So Far" (in en-US). https://analyticsindiamag.com/open-ai-gpt-3-language-model/.
- ↑ Derico, Ben; Kleinman, Zoe (2023-03-14). "OpenAI announces ChatGPT successor GPT-4" (in en-GB). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-64959346.
- ↑ Kafka, Peter (2 February 2023). "The AI Boom Is Here, and So Are The Lawsuits". Vox Media. https://www.vox.com/recode/23580554/generative-ai-chatgpt-openai-stable-diffusion-legal-battles-napster-copyright-peter-kafka-column.
- ↑ O'Donnell, James (27 June 2024). "Training AI Music Models Is About to Get Very Expensive". https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/06/27/1094379/ai-music-suno-udio-lawsuit-record-labels-youtube-licensing/.
- ↑ Milmo, Dan; Booth, Robert (2024-12-25). "UK proposes letting tech firms use copyrighted work to train AI" (in en-GB). https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/dec/17/uk-proposes-letting-tech-firms-use-copyrighted-work-to-train-ai/.
- ↑ Snapes, Laura (2025-01-27). "Elton John backs Paul McCartney in criticising proposed overhaul to UK copyright system" (in en-GB). https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jan/27/elton-john-paul-mccartney-criticise-proposed-copyright-system-changes-ai.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Glynn, Paul (25 February 2025). "Kate Bush and other artists protest AI copyright laws with silent album". BBC. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwyd3r62kp5o. Retrieved 25 February 2025.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Booth, Robert (2025-11-17). "Paul McCartney joins music industry protest against AI with silent track" (in en-GB). The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/nov/17/the-sound-of-silence-why-theres-barely-anything-there-in-paul-mccartney-new-release.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Tencer, Daniel (2025-02-25). "Damon Albarn, Kate Bush among 1,000+ artists to release silent album protesting UK's AI copyright plans" (in en-GB). https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/damon-albarn-kate-bush-among-1000-artists-to-release-silent-album-protesting-uks-ai-copyright-plans/.
- ↑ "1000 UK Artists - Is This What We Want". 6 March 2025. https://www.officialcharts.com/albums/1000-uk-artists-is-this-what-we-want/.
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