Chris Haughton is a designer and children’s book author, and a member of the Society of Authors. His first book A Bit Lost has been translated into 35 languages and has won awards in 12 countries including the Dutch Picture Book of the Year.
Chris is also the Laureate na nÓg, Ireland’s Children’s Literature Laureate. In June he and four other children’s book illustrators – Simona Ciraolo, Ged Adamson, Benji Davies and Momoko Abe – launched We Are Better Than This, a campaign encouraging people to stand up for creativity and children’s futures in the face of AI.
What inspired you and your co-founders to launch the We Are Better Than This Campaign?
“We are five authors and illustrators of children’s books and we each have our own reasons to get involved.
I had just finished making a non-fiction book about the history of information technology leading up to artificial intelligence, so I’ve been immersed in this subject for many years. Last year I made a post to try to explain the issue to a wider audience and it went viral.
Through posts online and through contact with the Association of Illustrators (AOI), we five illustrators began making regular contact with each other and meeting up. I knew people from the AOI well as I had worked for many years as a volunteer copyright advisor for them, advising illustrators on their contracts. I was in touch with some of the other copyright advisors, and all of us had the same feeling that generative AI would decimate the creative industries if the proposed change in copyright law comes into force.
It is important to point out that they [big tech companies] want to change copyright law for all the work they are harvesting, but they want to keep copyright law for themselves and their proprietary software. It’s a total scam. I felt that because I had some specialist knowledge of these things I have a responsibility to speak out. It is really important that we let people know the situation before it is too late to act.”
What was it as children’s books illustrators that brought you together around this issue?
“All of us involved in the campaign make books for children. The group is made up of myself, Simona Ciraolo, Benji Davies, Momoko Abe and Ged Adamson, we all both write and illustrate childrens books. We believe in the benefits of creativity and expression and reading and critical thinking, and we have spent much of our working lives trying to impart that to children.
We, like others in our industry, do the work we do because we believe in it. So it is very frustrating to see everyone in our tiny industry working so hard for so little money to empower children whilst the owners of big tech companies are doing the precise opposite. Many tech owners have publicly admitted that they do not allow their own children screen-time and are worried about the technology.
I believe AI is wrong in every way. Its owners are some of the most odious people on the planet. Their goal appears to be nothing more than a race between themselves to monopolise control of our data. And they get that data by stealing it from all of us without any permission or payment. And then they intend to use our work in competition against us. As if all that isn’t bad enough, it uses an extraordinary amount of energy on a planet that is trying to reduce emissions. Nobody wants any of this.”
How did you work together to create the video animation and campaign?
“We met up to brainstorm with the AOI to see what we could do to help. I suggested doing an animation and showed a draft of it the next time we all met. And it just grew from there really. Everyone gave feedback and we started thinking up next steps and had the idea to set up a site and make it into a campaign. Everyone brought something to it.
It has taken a while because we are all volunteers and have other things going on. But it has been really fun coming together, and everyone we approached went out of their way to help. That’s the thing with these things, all you need to do is start them they take on a life of their own.
It’s very depressing if you are worrying about the state of the world alone, but if you link up with others, it completely shifts your outlook. You find yourself doing something beautiful with like-minded folks. This project has brought us together and put us in touch with the people we most admire in the world. Miriam Margoyles did the voice over on the film. Oh Studio did the animation. Not Here To Be Liked did the site. It was a joy. And we got a wonderful reception. I think people really respond to work if it has come from the heart. They get it.”
What action do you hope the video will prompt people to take?
“To sign up and join us or set up your own grassroots campaign. We have been sending out actions and petitions as well as news to those that signed up to our mailing list. We have been doing talks and events, and we would love others to get involved. If you are living outside the UK, you are also welcome to sign up. Although we are London-based this is a global issue, we hope to link up with other groups around the world.”
You’re also asking people to sign a petition to protect creators’ rights. Why is this so important?
“We need to know what these companies are doing with our data. It is an absurd situation that we have no idea what big tech companies are doing with our data and what and how it is being used.”
What comes next for the campaign?
“We are doing a talk at In Motion next weekend. We are also taking part in a number of roundtables with industry bodies and policy advisers. In October we are speaking at Graham Lovelace’s Creators Emergency Summit to discuss ‘strategies and solutions designed to help creators defend their livelihoods in the era of generative AI’. We are also planning an evening of talks sometime in the next few months and we will be at the Illustration Fair in December.”
