The Intelligence Heist: How the Theft of the World’s Creativity Powered the Rise of Artificial Intelligence

Ed Newton-Rex is a composer, former tech executive, and campaigner for creators’ rights. In 2010 he founded Jukedeck, one of the first AI music generation startups, which was acquired by ByteDance. At ByteDance, Ed led the AI Music lab, then led Product for TikTok in Europe. He later led the Audio team at Stability AI, where his team’s product, Stable Audio, was named one of TIME Magazine’s best inventions of the year in 2023. In 2024 he founded Fairly Trained, a non-profit that certifies generative AI companies for fairer training data practices. He organised the Statement on AI Training, an open letter rejecting unfair generative AI training practices signed by almost 50,000 people, and Is This What We Want?, a protest album co-written by 1,000 UK musicians. He is a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University and a composer of choral music.