Paul McCartney
Musician
The Beatle became the public face of the UK campaign against a proposed copyright exemption for AI training, warning the government in January 2025 that letting AI “rip off” young songwriters would hollow out British music — even as he used machine learning to finish the last Beatles song. His fight is for licensing and consent, not against the tools.
In his words
You get young guys, girls, coming up, and they write a beautiful song, and they don’t own it, and they don’t have anything to do with it. And anyone who wants can just rip it off.
We’re the people, you’re the government. You’re supposed to protect us. That’s your job. So you know, if you’re putting through a bill, make sure you protect the creative thinkers, the creative artists, or you’re not going to have them.
Biography
Sir Paul McCartney (born 1942) needs little introduction: Beatle, one half of the most successful songwriting partnership in history, and still, in his eighties, arguably the most influential living voice in popular music. When he speaks on music policy, governments listen.
Fronting the UK copyright fight
In a BBC interview broadcast in January 2025, McCartney urged the British government to abandon its proposal to let AI companies train on copyrighted work unless creators opt out. He warned that the money generated by music “should be the person who created it. It shouldn’t be some tech giant somewhere.” He went on to lend a silent track to the Is This What We Want? protest album in February 2025 and signed the May 2025 letter to Keir Starmer alongside Elton John and Kate Bush backing transparency amendments to the Data Bill.
The truth is, the money’s going somewhere. When it gets on the streaming platforms, somebody is getting it, and it should be the person who created it. It shouldn’t be some tech giant somewhere.
His stance carries a well-known nuance: McCartney is no technophobe. In June 2023 he told BBC Radio 4 that machine learning had been used to “extricate” John Lennon’s voice from an old demo to complete “Now and Then,” the final Beatles song, describing the technology as scary but exciting. His objection is to uncompensated taking, not to the tools themselves.
Where they stand in the war
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/paul-mccartney