Just days after the US Supreme Court said it would not reconsider whether art generated by artificial intelligence can receive copyright protection, the UK has looked set to make its own major decision on AI and copyright.
For the past two months, the UK government has been consulting on a legal overhaul of its intellectual property laws, with a particular focus on AI. An economic impact assessment, along with an update on the consultation, is due on March 18, with final results to follow sometime afterward.
One of the main proposals, according to the Guardian, would allow AI firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic to use copyright-protected material without the owner’s consent. The idea has understandably drawn considerable backlash from artists—Elton John called the government “absolute losers” over the proposal—as well as from members of Parliament.
On Friday, the House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee published its own report on AI and copyright, warning that such proposals risk destroying the UK’s £124 billion creative industry for “speculative AI gains.” The report also called for an “opt-out” model allowing copyright holders to exclude their work from AI training, greater transparency requirements for AI developers, and support for tools that encourage a “licensing-first approach” to incorporating content into AI systems.
As the committee’s chair, Baroness Barbara Keeley, noted in a statement, AI models are already using artists’ work without consent. “Our creative industries face a clear and present danger from uncredited and unremunerated use of copyrighted material to train AI models,” Keeley said. “Photographers, musicians, authors, and publishers are seeing their work fed into AI models which then produce imitations that take employment and earning opportunities from the original creators.”
But any hope that the consultation process will quickly resolve the issue may need to be tempered. Also on Friday, the Financial Times reported that a source close to the consultation said the copyright question will likely be “kicked down the road.” The plan, it seems, is to spend another year gathering evidence and exploring different options, a move being framed as a concession to artists’ protests over the proposals so far.
Tech companies such as Alphabet have said they support the proposed opt-out model, while film studios and TV companies have argued that it is unfair and poses an “existential threat” to their industries. (It is worth noting that digital opt-out systems—like those used for cookies or ad tracking—tend to result in far more users effectively consenting than opt-in systems.)
But as many observers in the media industry have noted, with tech companies pressing ahead on AI development, even a delay in new rules will benefit them far more than the artists the delay is ostensibly meant to appease.
