Impact of AI on intellectual property

At present, UK copyright law applies when large data sets are used to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

On 17 December 2024, the Intellectual Property Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) published a consultation on proposals to change the current position. These would include the establishment of a copyright exemption for AI developers and a new rights reservation model whereby copyright holders would need to opt-out from having their material used for training AI. The foreword to the consultation gave this context:

Both our creative industries and our AI sector are UK strengths. They are vital to our national mission to grow the economy. This consultation sets out our plan to deliver a copyright and AI framework that rewards human creativity, incentivises innovation and provides the legal certainty required for long-term growth in both sectors.

At present, the application of UK copyright law to the training of AI models is disputed. Rights holders are finding it difficult to control the use of their works in training AI models and seek to be remunerated for its use. AI developers are similarly finding it difficult to navigate copyright law in the UK, and this legal uncertainty is undermining investment in and adoption of AI technology.

This status quo cannot continue. It risks limiting investment, innovation, and growth in the AI sector, and in the wider economy. It effectively prevents creative industries from exercising their rights.

There is great strength and breadth of feeling about the best way forward. This government recognises that it must tackle the difficult choices now to unlock growth, innovation and protect human creativity. This consultation seeks views on how we can deliver a solution that achieves our key objectives for the AI sector and creative industries.

The objectives would be:

1. Supporting right holders’ control of their content and ability to be remunerated for its use.
2. Supporting the development of world-leading AI models in the UK by ensuring wide and lawful access to high-quality data.
3. Promoting greater trust and transparency between the sectors.

The consultation said the government’s aim was “to deliver these objectives through a package of interventions, to be considered together, that addresses the needs of both sectors, providing clarity and transparency:”

The proposals include a mechanism for right holders to reserve their rights, enabling them to license and be paid for the use of their work in AI training. Alongside this, we propose an exception to support use at scale of a wide range of material by AI developers where rights have not been reserved.

This approach would balance right holders’ ability to seek remuneration while providing a clear legal basis for AI training with copyright material, so that developers can train leading models in the UK while respecting the rights of right holders.

For this approach to work, greater transparency from AI developers is a prerequisite - transparency about the material they use to train models, how they acquire it, and about the content generated by their models. This is vital to strengthen trust, and we are seeking views on how best to deliver it. Legislation may be required to provide legal certainty, and we will consider the case for it as we continue to develop our approach after the consultation.

We are also conscious that for this system to work there have to be simple technical means for creators to exercise their rights, either individually or collectively. This will require both the AI companies and creative industries to come together to create new technical systems to deliver the desired outcome of greater control and licensing of IP.

This approach aims to protect the interests of our creative industries and AI sectors. But successfully delivering it is not straightforward. It will require practical and technical solutions as well as good policy. We are open-eyed about this, but optimistic that we can succeed by working together – across our departments and both sectors.

The consultation closed on 25 February 2025 and received over 11,500 responses. These are now being analysed by the government (PQ 42775, 8 April 2025).

Comment

The consultation’s proposals are controversial. The Creative Rights in AI Coalition, a campaign group that includes UK Music, the Society of Authors, and the Publishers Association, criticised the proposal to introduce a rights reservation model (PDF). The coalition argued that AI developers should only be able to use copywritten material with the express permission of the rights holder. It also said that the government should prioritise enforcing existing copyright law to protect rights holders from their work being used for training AI systems without their permission. The coalition did, however, welcome proposals to increase transparency about how copyrighted work was used when training AI models.

Caroline Dinenage, Chair of the Culture, Media and Sport Committee, said the committee had “heard widespread concerns from the creative industries about how their copyrighted works are used to train AI models without consent or compensation”.

AI opportunities action plan (January 2025)

On 13 January 2025, the government published an AI Opportunities Action Plan. This was commissioned by the government and conducted by Matt Clifford, chair of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. The plan set out recommendations to encourage the growth of the UK’s AI sector. Among other things, it recommended that the government should seek to increase the amount of data available to AI developers and that it should “reform the UK text and data mining regime so that it is at least as competitive as the EU”. The government’s response to the plan, also published on 13 January 2025, pointed out that a consultation on copyright and AI was already underway.

Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL] – AI, copyright and the creative industries

When the Data (Use and Access) Bill [HL] was considered in the House of Lords, new clauses were added to the bill through non-government amendments. These were designed to protect the rights of copyright holders in the creative industry sectors from web-crawlers and other “data gatherers” – for details, see section 10.8 of the Library briefing, Data (Use and Access) Bill (PDF).

The new clauses were removed from the bill by the government at committee stage in the House of Commons after divisions (PBC 11 March 2025 c109-110). Chris Bryant, Minister of State for Data Protection and Telecoms said the government wanted “genuine transparency about what is used in training AI, alongside rights holders’ control of their work and appropriate access to training material for AI”. While he accepted the intention behind the clauses, the minister said that a bill on data was not “the right vehicle for action” [PBC 11 March 2025 c84]. He also referred to the consultation on copyright and AI, that engagement with stakeholders would not end with the consultation, and that the government didn’t want to “rush to legislate”. He also noted that industry “often comes up with the best ideas”:

…I want to harness that, whether it is greater transparency about AI training or standards on web crawlers, metadata and watermarking. Whatever the solution, we want to be confident in its efficacy and, critically, in its simplicity and accessibility. We have said repeatedly that we will not move forward in this sphere unless we are confident we can give rights holders greater control over the use of their works. Once we have analysed the responses to the consultation, we will publish proposals…[PBC 11 March 2025 c85]

A date for the bill’s report stage has not yet been announced. It will then return to the Lords for consideration of the changes made to the bill in the Commons.

Further reading

• House of Lords Library, Copyright and artificial intelligence: impact on creative industries, 27 January 2025
• The Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology (POST), Policy implications of artificial intelligence (AI), 9 January 2024
• POST, Artificial intelligence and new technology in creative industries, 7 October 2024
• POST, Artificial intelligence: an explainer, 14 December 2023