The UK Government has a golden opportunity for home-grown growth – and it’s all about AI. On the last day of the UK government consultation on copyright and AI, we are delighted to support the huge UK media and creative industries’ Make It Fair campaign running across UK media with well known figures from the arts and media drawing attention to what’s at stake and highlight what can be achieved if the government gets this right. The EPC has also submitted its own response to the consultation.
Currently, AI exists in a wild west muddle and mess. This muddle and mess undermines the UK’s significant creative sector every day – a crown jewel in the British economy which generates £120 billion in annual revenue on UK shores. When AI systems systematically ignore content creator copyright and ride roughshod over very clear copyright law – and they do - rightsholders are disadvantaged and exploited to the detriment of the UK creative economy.
The AI tech sector wants the content for free – of course it does – but, newsflash, it has never been free. The UK government must absolutely not deal with mass copyright infringement by AI companies by granting exceptions to legalise theft – it needs to sort out compliance, not retro fit the law to benefit the lawbreakers. In any case, the UK has the advantage of a crystal ball and can see from the EU copyright law how exceptions have made a mockery of fair use. Exceptions for text and data mining - even with an opt-opt, have been proven not to work for rightsholders, with rights reservations routinely ignored. With feet in both the EU and the UK, and with many years’ experience working on copyright issues for news and magazine publishers, the EPC can say with complete confidence that British and European content sectors, and indeed the AI offering, will be impoverished by poorer copyright protections. In Brussels, we have a live Geiger counter in the form of the Digital Markets Act, showing how Big Tech continues to obfuscate on its legal commitments – a playbook on taking as long as possible to do as little as possible - now given even greater confidence by Trump’s openly anti-European tech regulation stance. This is not the time to pander to Big Tech, especially when the UK will lose out as a result.
The UK Government has an opportunity in its current work programme to deal with AI and Copyright to foster a legal environment that supports collaboration between the rightsholders and the tech sector. Far from pitting one sector against the other, the Government needs to take this opportunity to create a symbiotic collaborative and entrepreneurial marketplace. After all, the differentiator between AI provision is not so much in the technology as in the quality of the outputs which is why they want quality content to drive it so copyright protected content is of enormous value to them. If the content creators withdraw their permission for their content to be used, then the AI systems are diminished and consumers are denied access to quality, trustworthy, diverse content driven AI.
In the absence of technical solutions for machine-readable copyright, which have been developed by rightsholders and kicked into the long grass by Big Tech (and, by the way, tech and rightsholders both know that robots.txt does not do the job), we need an environment that encourages market-led licensing. A market-based approach is the only sustainable solution. Indeed, it is already developing. To date, more than 100 AI licensing deals have been announced, covering major publishers such as News Corp, The Guardian, Axel Springer, Prisa, Schibsted and Reuters. The UK should foster this emerging market, not undercut it with an exception that discourages licensing. AI companies want high-quality, trusted content, and they are willing to pay for it. Rather than removing publishers’ rights, the government should support licensing activity that facilitates fair agreements at scale, both individually and collectively.
A fair, healthy, transparent environment will foster growth and investment and may even attract a new category of home-grown AI entrepreneurs to enter the market and compete. This is what the Government should be pitching for.
The AI industry – and the British economy - can only benefit from a healthy creative and content sector because, as we all know, the problem for parasites is that when the host dies, the parasite does too.
Background:
On 17 December 2024, the UK government launched a consultation process on copyright and AI.
The government is trying to decide whether to let tech companies use content without permission unless the creators specifically say "no” through an unenforceable opt-out.
Creators argue this puts the burden on them to police their work – which would be both costly and time consuming – and that tech companies should pay for using their content and work.
The UK creative industries, which includes artists, authors, journalists, illustrators, photographers, film makers, scriptwriters, singers and songwriters, generates around £120 billion a year towards the UK economy.
As the government progresses towards an AI Bill, the government must take the consultation responses on board before making a final decision on proposed legislation. The Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) is responsible for the bill.
MPs are currently debating provisions added to the Data Bill which – in contrast to the government’s plans – would make existing copyright law enforceable in the age of AI.