Has the AI Uprising Begun: The Guardian's Provocation and Fiona Katauskas

Famous Guardian cartoonist Fiona Katauskas raises a provocative question in her new column: has a wave of major backlash against AI begun? The question is not accidental — over the past year, the industry has shifted from frenzied hype to confrontation with serious criticism and growing resistance. And the signs of this are visible everywhere.

Signs of Discontent

The numbers are there. In April 2026, the European AI Act began full-scale implementation — the world's most stringent set of rules for artificial intelligence. This law does not merely restrict AI use in sensitive sectors; it requires companies to disclose how they train models and to obtain consent for data use.

Simultaneously, a wave of lawsuits from authors, artists, and journalists swept across the US and Europe. They suspect their works were used to train models without consent and without compensation. OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others have received legal claims worth tens of billions of dollars.

The lawsuits are already yielding results: some publishers have negotiated licenses with companies. Hollywood remembers the 2023 strike by screenwriters and actors — AI was at the center of negotiations. Journalists demand that media outlets pay for the use of their texts.

Programmers are outraged that GitHub Copilot was trained on open-source code without asking the authors.

From Hype to Regulation

Two years ago, the situation was completely different. ChatGPT launched in November 2022 and captured the world's imagination: everyone talked only about AI, startups attracted billions, newspapers published stories about revolution. The main question sounded naive: how quickly will AI replace humans? Now the main question is different: who is responsible for the damage? Who controls the data? Why do companies train models on protected content without consent? The industry has moved from the phase of wonder to the phase of accountability. And this change is systemic. The signs are visible everywhere:

• Europe, Canada, Brazil, and China are introducing strict rules for AI training and use
• Copyright lawsuits are growing in number and scale — billions of dollars in courts
• Companies are hiring lawyers instead of AI engineers for new positions
• Investments in AI startups have slowed, with interest shifting to private models and corporate software
• Media and creative industries are demanding transparency in training and content licensing

Who Adapts, Who Falls Behind

Large companies — Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI — are adapting to the new reality quickly. They hire lawyers, negotiate content licenses with publishers, and create private datasets for training. They can afford it. For mid-sized startups, it's much harder: they cannot afford legal battles or massive licensing. Many are exiting the game or seeking a niche where AI is needed but regulation is lighter. The issue is not that AI is bad as a technology. The point is that the industry spent several years building products without thinking about the rights of people whose data was used for training. This was naive and expensive: the bill came in the form of courts and regulation.

"This is not the end of AI, this is the end of the era of free and

lawless hype," — say analysts.

What This Means for Everyone

The wave of resistance against AI is not a rejection of the technology, but a transition to maturity. The industry can no longer ignore copyright, privacy, and ethics in data use. Companies that adapt — paying authors, openly publishing how they train models, obtaining consent — will be at an advantage. They will have licensed data, legal protection, and the trust of authors. Others will face courts and regulation. And this gap will only grow. Fiona Katauskas is right to ask: there are signs of backlash against AI. But this is not the death of AI, but the beginning of its normal development — as a technology that lives by rules, pays taxes, and respects authors.

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