The UK government has backed off plans to allow AI companies to access copyrighted material for free for training purposes by default.
The shift in stance follows complaints from leading figures in the creative industries – including Paul McCartney, Elton John, Coldplay, writer/director Richard Curtis, artist Antony Gormley, and actor Ian McKellen – about plans to permit data scraping of copyrighted work unless the rights holder opts out.
"We have listened," said science minister Liz Kendall. "We have engaged extensively with creatives, AI firms, industry bodies, unions, academics, and AI adopters, and that engagement has shaped our approach. This is why we can confirm today that the Government no longer has a preferred option."
The government has published a report on copyright and AI and a separate impact assessment [PDF] that points to an estimate from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which says AI adoption could add 0.4 to 1.3 percentage points to productivity. This could translate into an additional £55 billion to £140 billion in the UK's gross value added (GVA) by 2030. "These estimates are highly uncertain," the report notes.
GVA from the UK's creative industries (CIs) is worth £146 billion, or nearly 6 percent of the UK's total GVA in 2024. £62 billion, or 42 percent of that, comes from the IT software and computer services subsector, including AI services and developers.
"The success of the AI sector and the CIs are intertwined. The CIs generate high-quality content that is needed to train the best AI models. Meanwhile, AI has the potential to transform creators' workflows, amplifying their productivity and giving them powerful new tools," the impact assessment said.
The government's "Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence" [PDF] said "a broad copyright exception [for AI training] with opt-out is no longer the government's preferred way forward."
It proposes that the government works with industry experts to "develop best practice on input transparency and to identify best practice on technical tools and standards that may have positive outcomes in relation to licensing which will be kept under review."
"We propose to keep market-led licensing approaches under review as the market for AI develops," the report said.
The government also said it would monitor litigation around AI and copyright in the UK and elsewhere, "including how secondary liability may apply to imported AI models placed on the UK market."
Creative Content Exchange (CCE) is set to test a range of commercial models for licensing and plans to launch an operational pilot platform in the summer. ®
Source: The register