hello@openfuture.eu
Today, the UK government launched a consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence. In the consultation, the UK government essentially signals its intention to adopt the EU approach to the use of copyrighted works for the purpose of training AI models, as embodied in the commercial TDM exception in Article 4 of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market Directive (which was adopted with UK support before Brexit but never implemented after Brexit). In addition, the UK government also proposes to introduce a version of the training data transparency provisions that mirror the obligation in Article 53(1)(d) of the EU AI Act:
This consultation seeks views on how we can deliver a solution that achieves our key objectives for the AI sector and creative industries. These objectives are:
- Supporting right holders’ control of their content and ability to be remunerated for its use.
- Supporting the development of world-leading AI models in the UK by ensuring wide and lawful access to high-quality data.
- Promoting greater trust and transparency between the sectors.
Our aim is 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 the 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 strengthening trust, and we are seeking views on how best to deliver it.
The deadline for responses to the consultation is the 25th of February 2025 and responses can be submitted here.
