THE BIG STORIES
Truce in Ukraine could come “in weeks”

📣 A truce between Ukraine and Russia could be agreed within the next few weeks, according to French President Emmanuel Macron. He was speaking after meeting Donald Trump at the White House on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion. (BBC)

• Macron said Europe was prepared to send peacekeepers to Ukraine: Trump said, during their meeting, that Vladimir Putin “will accept” European troops in Ukraine, which appeared to have been ruled out by Russia last week. (Semafor)

• The US split with European allies and voted with Russia, Belarus and North Korea in opposing a resolution condemning Russia for the Ukraine war. The joint European resolution was supported by 93 countries. (Guardian)

• Has Emmanuel Macron managed to reason with Donald Trump? “It is too early to tell whether the small steps forward that Mr Macron claims to have made will prove meaningful. Mr Trump’s word is worth what it is worth.” (The Economist £)

• It was awkward handshakes all round as French president Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump met in Washington. Their previous clinches had gone viral… two more long grips last night may do the same. (Daily Mail)

📣 Leading figures in the UK’s arts world have are urging Labour not to “smash a hole in the moral right of creators” by exempting artificial intelligence companies from copyright laws. In a letter to The Times today, signatories including Kate Bush, Stephen Fry and Helen Fielding say “there is no moral or economic argument for stealing our copyright.” (Read the letter £) See ideas, below, for more background.

📣 Rangers have appointed former captain Barry Ferguson as interim manager. He’s also bringing a backroom staff made up of fellow former Rangers players as the Ibrox club attempts to turn round a dire season. See sport, below, for the full reaction. (BBC)

IDEAS
What’s all the fuss around AI and copyright?

🗣️If you find yourself passing a newsstand this morning, you’ll notice something unusual: most of the newspapers will have the same front page. They’re all running “wraps” - those four-page ads which wrap around the regular newspaper (the bane, I should add, of every newspaper editor). And they’re not for a supermarket, but for a campaign: to protect intellectual property from new Government proposals intended to support AI.

Today’s action has its roots in a consultation paper released in December, and a consultation process which concludes today. It attempts to solve a problem in the creation of AI: much of it has been “trained” by consuming vast amounts of copyright material already on the internet. Yet the creators of that content have not been compensated for its use: the AI developers just “scraped” it from existing websites and databases. The disputes that is causing, or could cause in the future, is putting AI developers off working in the UK, the government says.

The proposals put forward by the government would end the dispute by allowing AI developers to use copyright material, legally, unless the authors had explicitly reserved their rights for it not to be used. (Read the consultation paper)

The creative industries are unhappy on multiple fronts.

• Creators want the right to say no to the use of their work for AI training, or to be paid if they say yes.

• They’re worried the trained AI systems will then compete with them by creating new, derivative works in text, images, and video.

• They’re unconvinced the opt-out proposed will be effective.

The AI industry, for its part, has previously said its work wouldn’t be possible without being able to train their models on copyright material.

Today’s campaign argues the creative industries - encompassing artists, authors, songwriters, filmmakers and more - are worth £120 billion to the UK economy annually. It’s backed by Sir Paul McCartney and Elton John, among many others. More than 1,000 artists - including Kate Bush and Damon Albarn - have released a silent AI protest album.

The 10 biggest global AI companies, working in a fully-inflated bubble of hype, were worth a collective $16 trillion at the start of the year - so are either too important to get in the way of, or are rich enough to stump up for their training materials, depending on your point of view.

The creative industries are, firmly, of the latter view. The Daily Mail even started a campaign on the issue last week - their leader comment is a typically trenchant effort, demanding the UK’s “creative jewels” are not used “as a votive offering to the new gods of Silicon Valley”.

But, if you prefer, the Guardian has similar views: “Big tech should have no more rights over the work of others than anybody else.”

We know which way Trump and Musk will be pushing, should the matter come up when Sir Keir Starmer visits Washington tomorrow… the next united front page could well be on the way if the Prime Minister promises to plough on with the plans.

AROUND SCOTLAND

📣 A Scottish businessman who went missing in Kenya more than a week ago has been found dead. Campbell Scott was a senior director of data analytics company FICO, and had been attending a conference in Nairobi when he went missing. His body was found in a forest 60 miles away, and a taxi driver and a nightclub waiter have been arrested on suspicion of his murder. (The Times £)

📣 The “big clean-up” of Glasgow’s streets is now on, with Glasgow City Council allocating an extra £6.5 million for cleansing services. Regular readers may feel we’ve been here before… (Daily Record)

📣 The two sisters found in the River Dee in Aberdeen died from drowning, it has been confirmed. The women, originally from Hungary, disappeared in the early hours of January 7, having sent a message to their landlady indicating they would not be returning to their flat. Their deaths are not being treated as suspicious. (STV)

AROUND THE UK & WORLD

📣 UK energy prices are expected to rise from April under a new price cap being annonced by the sector’s regulator, Ofgem, today. (BBC)

📣 Disgraced MP Mike Amesbury, jailed for 10 weeks yesterday for punching a man in the street, is facing calls to resign his seat immediately rather than wait for a recall petition to be raised. (BBC)

📣 Pope Francis has shown a “slight improvement” and has resumed some work, it was reported overnight. (AP)

📣 The new boom industry in India’s smaller cities? Crypto trading. (Reuters)

BUSINESS & ECONOMICS

💰 BP will abandon its promise to cut oil and gas output and plans to announce at least one big divestment tomorrow at its investor day. (FT)

💰 The Wood Group is in talks with Dubai’s Sidara over a possible takeover after a tumultuous few weeks in which the Aberdeen-based engineering and services company has seen its share price plunge. (Daily Business)

💰 Women now hold almost 45% of seats on FTSE 100 boards - a new record - but the number of female chief executives dipped below 10 for a time last year. “Gender balance is in sight”, says the FTSE Women Leaders report. (The Guardian)

SPORT

⚽️ The Daily Record was right yesterday, even if nobody quite believed it: Rangers legend Barry Ferguson has been appointed interim manager of Rangers despite - in the words of Alan Pattullo today - the fact he “hasn’t delivered a team talk in earnest since a home 3-1 defeat for Alloa against East Fife three years ago”.

Ferguson will be assisted by fellow legends Neil McCann, Billy Dodds and Allan McGregor: even those Rangers fans desperate for change at Ibrox will struggle to be convinced by an array of TV pundits taking over.

Pattullo also has the answer to the pub quiz question: when did Ferguson, McCann, Dodds and McGregor all appear on the same pitch? (The Scotsman)

• Mark Palmer: “Rangers have been run so badly in recent years that if anyone could make a populist decision which turned out to not be very popular at all, you would put money on it being the men at the Ibrox helm [… yet] there is a logic to the moves”. (The Times £)