UK Lords warn of AI impact on creative industries

A report, AI, copyright and the creative industries, from the Communications and Digital Committee of the UK House of Lords, has warned of the threats posed to creative industries by AI.

The report notes that generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems can now produce imitations of creative material in seconds. These capabilities depend on training models on vast quantities of human-created content, often without explicit consent or remuneration. As a result, the protections for creators afforded by copyright are now under threat.

In its report, the Communications and Digital Committee says that this is not because the UK’s copyright framework is outdated or in need of reform. Rather, widespread unlicensed use of protected works, coupled with limited transparency from AI developers about how their models have been trained, leaves rightsholders unsure about whether their content has been used, and unable to enforce their rights when it has. In addition, the absence of a robust ‘personality right’ or specific protection for digital likeness in the UK means creators and performers are unable to challenge harmful outputs that imitate their distinctive style, voice or persona.

The report concludes that the Government should support the UK to become a world-leading home for responsible, licensing-based AI development, rather than weakening copyright law for speculative AI gains and damaging our creative industries in the process.

Key recommendations

To achieve this, the report calls on the Government to:

• Rule out a new commercial text and data mining (TDM) exception with an opt-out model. Mixed public messaging from the Government and an extended consultation period have undermined trust and stalled licensing and investment. The Government should, in the next year, publish a final decision on its approach to AI and copyright. In the meantime, it should set out clearly that it will not introduce a new TDM exception with an opt-out mechanism, as initially proposed in its consultation on AI and copyright.

• Close gaps in protection for identity, style and digital replicas: The Government should introduce protections against unauthorised digital replicas and harmful ‘in the style of’ AI outputs. These must give creators and performers clear control over commercial exploitation of their identity.

• Make transparency about AI training data a statutory obligation. The Government should establish a clear mandatory transparency framework for UK AI developers, as well as considering how public procurement and regulatory tools could promote compliance with UK transparency requirements by international developers.

• Create the conditions for a fair and inclusive UK licensing market. A market for licensing content for AI use is already emerging and, given its wealth of creative content, the UK is well placed to benefit. The Government should support this market to grow in a way that works for AI developers and rightsholders of different sizes. It should also back the creation and adoption of the technical tools that will support a licensing-first approach: open, globally aligned standards for rights reservation, data provenance and the labelling of AI-generated content.

• Prioritise the development and adoption of sovereign AI models. International examples demonstrate that domestically governed AI systems can offer an alternative to an overreliance on opaquely trained US-based models. The Government’s sovereign AI efforts should foster the creation of models that deliver enhanced transparency and respect for copyright.

Baroness Keeley, Chair of the Communications and Digital Committee, said: “Our creative industries face a clear and present danger from uncredited and unremunerated use of copyrighted material to train AI models. Photographers, musicians, authors and publishers are seeing their work fed into AI models which then produce imitations that take employment and earning opportunities from the original creators.”

“AI may contribute to our future economic growth, but the UK creative industries create jobs and economic value now. In 2023 the creative industries delivered £124 billion of economic value to the UK and this is set to grow to £141 billion by 2030. Watering down the protections in our existing copyright regime to lure the biggest US tech companies is a race to the bottom that does not serve UK interests. We should not sacrifice our creative industries for AI jam tomorrow.

“The Government should now make clear it will not pursue a new text and data mining exception with an opt-out mechanism for training commercial AI models. Instead, it should focus on strengthening UK protections for creators, including against unauthorised digital replicas and ‘in the style of’ uses of creators’ work and identity. The Government’s task should be to create the conditions that will allow a licensing-first approach to AI training to flourish, backed by effective transparency requirements and technical standards for data provenance and labelling, so that rightsholders and developers can participate confidently in this emerging market.

“The future for AI in the UK should be based on transparent and responsible use of training data. We are calling on the Government to embrace the opportunities this presents, and to demonstrate its commitment to the UK’s gold-standard copyright regime and our outstanding creative industries in its forthcoming economic assessment and update on AI and copyright.”