King Charles speaks out on the threats of AI

King Charles warned of the threat of artificial intelligence (AI) to the creative industries as he honoured one of Britain's most critically acclaimed authors.

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro revealed Charles had told him it was “important to keep battling.”

The King's intervention comes after warnings that tech giants are looting the work of content creators to train their AI services.

Creatives warn that US-based firms are using online text, images and music to train their AI models and do not credit those who created it.

Japanese-born Sir Kazuo said of his conversation with the King: “This is the third time he's presented me with something and he alluded to the fact that we keep doing this.”

He continued, “He asked me about my writing and he did actually raise the question about AI and the threat to the creative people of AI.”

“He said he thought it was quite important to keep battling on that front,” Sir Kazuo said.

The Nobel prize-winning writer, 70, was made a Companion of Honour for his services to literature at an event at Windsor Castle.

He is also one of the number of authors, musicians and artists who signed an open letter calling out the “unlicensed use” of creative works for training AI systems last year.

He said it posed a “major, unjust threat” to artists' livelihoods and that using content without credit amounted to “theft.”

Sir Kazuo said: “I don't object necessarily to using creative work in the training of AI, it's the framework in which it's done.”

The Never Let Me Go writer continued, “I think many of us are concerned about the fact that the copyrights were completely infringed.”

“Our work was being taken – all my books have been taken to train AI – but if the copyrights can be respected then it can be used in a way that, say, a traditional researcher would use somebody else's book,” he said.

“Just because it's AI, it shouldn't be an excuse to just raid people's intellectual property,” Sir Kazuo Ishiguro concluded.