Ed Newton-Rex
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ednewtonrex.bsky.social
Ed Newton-Rex
@ednewtonrex.bsky.social
CEO of Fairly Trained / Composer. Working towards fairer training data practices in generative AI.
Anyone who has worked in / adjacent to trust & safety teams in big tech will tell you there's no way the X team didn't consider the potential for Grok to undress people ahead of releasing it. Yet they released it anyway.

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January 5, 2026 at 9:28 AM
Pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that the AI backlash in 2026 will make what happened in 2025 look like gentle disapproval.
December 28, 2025 at 10:17 AM
Six authors are suing Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, xAI and Perplexity for what they call “a straightforward and deliberate act of theft that constitutes copyright infringement.”

The lawsuits over AI training show no signs of abating.

aboutblaw.com/bkv0
December 23, 2025 at 8:00 AM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
And therefore if you wish to get research funding for an AI project right now you must either be doing security/defence or assurance. Or maybe sovereignty because they like that too. It's incredibly shortsighted and it's making my job more difficult and more boring.
December 19, 2025 at 10:33 AM
An analysis of X posts from the UK's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology suggests it is overwhelmingly pro-AI.

I analysed the sentiment of every X post from DSIT that mentioned "AI" this year. Of 122 posts, 110 were positive about AI, and only 7 mentioned its downsides.

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December 19, 2025 at 9:40 AM
New copyright lawsuit just dropped.

It's a class action lawsuit brought by independent musicians against AI music product Mureka.

It alleges Mureka systematically copied & stored musicians' work to create a product that competes with them.

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December 18, 2025 at 11:53 AM
I'm keen to speak with any creatives who have lost work because of generative AI, for something I'm writing.

If this is you, please DM me. Thank you!
December 17, 2025 at 10:29 AM
Updating my resume
December 17, 2025 at 9:02 AM
Brutal (but fair) Guardian headline today

Only 3% of respondents to the UK government’s consultation on AI & copyright supported their unfair plan to hand AI companies people’s work for free.

95% said AI companies should license training data.

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December 16, 2025 at 9:16 AM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
[jaunty music plays]
December 15, 2025 at 5:54 PM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
I wrote to my MP about the govt plans ages ago. He said "We need to balance rights against the need for growth", "I'm assured that we'll be able to provide sufficient power for new datacentres", and "Let's just wait and see what the results of the survey are".

Hope he takes the L gracefully.
🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright:

- 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is)

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December 15, 2025 at 5:00 PM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
Remember how biased and leading the questions were in favour of the AI companies? And this was still the response.
🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright:

- 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is)

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December 15, 2025 at 4:40 PM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
This whole thing was made so our gov could say 'see nobody cares' to the point most of the questions were leading to that outcome... And people still spoke almost universally against it.

The more you push shit on people they don't want, the more they'll push back!
🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright:

- 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is)

🧵 1/2
December 15, 2025 at 2:34 PM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
@ianmurraymp.bsky.social you're now in a position where you can hopefully be very vocal about this - please take note!
December 15, 2025 at 12:58 PM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
I filled in this survey and saw the questions were hilariously leading and noted the whole thing was clearly designed to fatigue the people filling it in.

And yet, even with all that, only 3% of respondents agreed with Labour's preferred option.

Incredible, well done all 🎉
🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright:

- 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is)

🧵 1/2
December 15, 2025 at 12:52 PM
Reposted by Ed Newton-Rex
Hey @shaundaviesmp.bsky.social, you folks are going to listen to the people right? Hoping to get some reassurance from my local MP.
December 15, 2025 at 12:38 PM
🚨 The UK government just published a breakdown of the responses to its consultation on AI & copyright:

- 95% of respondents want AI companies to pay for their training data (made up of 88% saying strengthen copyright law, & 7% saying leave it as is)

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December 15, 2025 at 11:22 AM
It’s time for the UK government to rule out an AI copyright exception.

Stand up for British creatives, and pave the way for an AI industry that can thrive without exploiting millions of people.

My piece in today’s Times:

www.thetimes.com/business/tec...
December 15, 2025 at 10:50 AM
The vinyls of our silent album protesting the UK government’s proposals on AI & copyright are being pressed right now and they look beautiful

Through pre-orders, we’ve already sold over half of the limited run of 1,000 copies :)

Order one now at 1000artists.greedbag.com

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December 5, 2025 at 10:50 AM
It’s a year since Suchir Balaji, the former OpenAI employee who spoke out on copyright, died.

In the brief time in which I got to know him, it was immediately apparent that he was an incredible person.

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November 27, 2025 at 10:08 AM
It has been pointed out to me that this means 2.5 billion-dollar AI music company Suno has spent less money on music than many individual music fans
Billboard got access to Suno’s investment pitch deck.

It revealed that Suno has spent $32 million on compute, and $2,000 on training data.

Let that sink in.

www.billboard.com/pro/suno-cre...
November 25, 2025 at 10:28 AM
Billboard got access to Suno’s investment pitch deck.

It revealed that Suno has spent $32 million on compute, and $2,000 on training data.

Let that sink in.

www.billboard.com/pro/suno-cre...
November 24, 2025 at 11:44 PM
It’s funny to observe a concerted effort among AI types to rebrand slop as a term that also applies to human-made work.

This attempted rebrand is 100% because it’s so extraordinarily effective as a word to describe and dismiss all AI output.

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November 24, 2025 at 10:19 AM
AI types like to argue that image models - like Google’s new one yesterday - will make illustrators more efficient, or will actually create *more* work for the best artists.

But what they will really do is put artists out of work, and do so unfairly.

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November 21, 2025 at 3:11 PM