On Monday, the Government responded to Matt Clifford’s (the Government AI Opportunities Adviser) AI Opportunities Plan which outlined recommendations for the Government to:
- grow the UK's AI sector
- drive adoption of AI across the economy to boost growth
- improve products and services
These recommendations include reforming the UK text and data mining regime so that it is at least as competitive as the EU and establishing a copyright cleared British media asset training data set, which can be licenced internationally at scale. The Government has welcomed these recommendations.
This is a worrying sign for the creative industries and we are concerned that control of copyright will become weakened in any future regime.
As part of the Creative Rights in AI Coalition campaign group, Pact has called on the Government to provide assurances that all options in the Copyright and AI Consultation – including enforcing the existing copyright regime with transparency provisions – remain on the table. We also think it is deeply concerning to see the EU approach looked to as a regime that the UK should mirror. The EU is still working out how to implement its EU AI Act and there are persistent questions over the workability of their opt-out regime. This serves as a real-time warning for the Government about imitating regimes that have shown no signs of being effective. The UK should learn from the EU regime's shortcomings, not blindly imitate it.
Furthermore, there is no ‘uncertainty' in the UK text and data mining regime: it is clear that UK copyright law does not allow text and data mining for commercial purposes without a licence. The only uncertainty is around who has been using the UK's creative crown jewels as training material without permission and how they got hold of it, making transparency provisions vital.
Write to
Your MP
As of now, the Creative Rights in AI Coalition’s Email your MP service is live.
We urge all Pact members, as soon as you are able, to:
- Email your MP
- Publicise the campaign on social media
- Share the campaign with your wider network, and ask any famous members to write and share their letter on social media