Truth-quake warning

Speech to the All Party Writers Group at the House of Commons on 2 December 2025

Some five years ago, I was invited to join the Trades Union Congress AI working group. We were a gathering of trades unionists trying to understand the coming technological revolution so that we could advise our peers on what might be the most effective industrial response.

I started reading everything that I could on the subject. At that time, you might find a news story every fortnight or so about AI, so long as your read all the broadsheets and several international newspapers. 

It is quite a contrast with today when the blizzard of news on the subject seems relentless.

Just today, I noticed the FT reporting a sell off of US tech stock by British pension funds who fear that an AI bubble is about to burst. 

Meanwhile the Daily Mail has discovered the world’s first AI chef. He, or she, is working in a restaurant in Dubai where the signature dish is ‘dinosaur tartare’, which apparently accurately recreates the taste of actual dinosaur flesh, and is served in such a way that the meat arrives on your plate, apparently still pulsating, as if still alive.

What a prospect.

I confess, I used to fear that I might soon encounter an AI trades union official – something that combined, say Mick Lynch’s ability to deal with awkward questions, Martin Luther King’s genius for oratory, and Nelson Mandala’s gifts as a negotiator.

But now I discover that the best that the AI chef can come up with is fake T Bone of T Rex, I am feeling rather more confident that I will see out my working life without an AI replacement serving me up as a dinosaur tartare.

But I highlight the news coverage of AI for a reason. 

For all that that AI coverage now appears wall-to-wall, and reports of journalists losing their jobs because of AI arrives almost daily, I fear that we are saying far too little about some of the most serious implications of AI.

The first is the ongoing decline of aggregate trust in facts. On the one hand we see an attacks from the top from people like President Trump and his alternative facts, and denigration of journalists. But at the bottom, we see a degradation in the quality of news because journalists are increasingly required to rely on AI. As a reader, you don’t have to encounter too many AI hallucinations on a news platform before you give up believing anything that it reports. 

We ignore the implications of that at our peril.

The second little mentioned issue is the erosion of people’s ability to make a living from creating news, be they photographers, videographers, writers or presenters. 

It is worth remembering that the UK has arguably the most dynamic news media sector in the world, and that one third of its workforce is freelance. So the ability of freelance journalists to make a living matters well beyond their own welfare.

The NUJ surveyed its freelance members to gather their opinions about AI, and the potential appeal of models such as Scoop, that would allow for the collective licensing of their copyright material for AI learning.

More than 400 freelance NUJ members took the time to respond. Three fifths of them thought that their work should only be used for AI learning with their explicit consent. A similar proportion thought that where their material had already been used for AI learning that compensation through collective licensing would be appropriate. Nearly a quarter, incidentally, had already found that their work had been used for AI learning, without their consent.

These figures show a genuine level of concern, but also a refreshing practicality in terms of creators’ willingness to consider imaginative ways that their work could be used, and could be rewarded. We know from ALCS research last year that freelance journalists median wage was just £17,000. Calculated as an hourly rate, that is below the minimum wage. Any fall in freelances’ ability to earn will quickly drive away thousands of these marginal earners – to the great detriment of the industry.

However, the attitudes revealed in our survey seem to me a strong platform on which Scoop can build, and I hope that those developing the project will be able to harness that enthusiasm for the general good.

Hopefully they will also be able to press for other important safeguards, such as the transparent labelling of AI in journalism, comprehensive safeguards to buttress existing copyright protections, strict regulation of data mining and primacy of consent and compensation whenever copyright material is used.

While I have your attention, can I mention another couple of initiatives to which legislators can contribute that could make a real difference to freelance journalists, and others. And this applies in respect of the impact of AI and other issues.

It is not very well appreciated just how badly freelance journalists are treated by the established news platforms. Keep in mind that commercial news platforms are generally huge, international public companies. In economic terms, those supplying them with stories and pictures are scarcely even minnows, and I am sad to say that most news platforms exploit this disparity relentlessly.

There are many egregious practices, but I will restrict myself to talking about just one – implicit contracts. This is where news organisations impose terrible terms on their contributors without obtaining their consent. When challenged, they point to case law, some of it from the nineteenth century, and claim that everyone knows about these industry standard terms.

It is a practice that should bring shame on the companies in question, particularly as some of them are not shy about lecturing others about morality.

But, as it happens, there are two ongoing government initiatives that could do something about this, and about some of the AI issues that we have been discussing. 

Last summer the Government announced an inquiry into how unfair business terms, particularly payment terms, impact smaller businesses. The Government has yet to respond to that consultation, but the expectation is that measures will be laid before Parliament in the near future. Plenty of freelance journalists shared their experiences with that consultation. The responsibility of legislators such as yourselves is to ensure that the proposals, when they come, really address these wrongs. 

The second opportunity is the Government’s pending appointment of a Freelance Champion for the Creative Sector. The terms of this appointment have yet to be published, but the process by which this appointment will be made is another opportunity to bang the drum for reasonable business terms for freelance workers, including the likely impact of AI.

I hope that you will all hold ministers’ feet to the fire in respect of identifying a champion who can really deliver.

I will finish by saying that for so long as there exist rooms of concerned individuals such as we are, I don’t fear technology. One of Einstein’s dictums was that ‘The human spirit must prevail over technology’. 

I think that describes that task that we have set ourselves perfectly. Our responsibility now is to continue developing strategies that achieve that end. I look forward to working with you all as we do just that.