Today I wrote to , UK Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport, to oppose the government's proposals on changing copyright law in favour of AI companies.
The letter is below. If you're concerned about the proposals, you can contact her at lisa.nandy.mp@parliament.uk.
Dear Secretary of State,
I am writing to express my deep concern over the government’s consultation on AI and copyright announced yesterday.
As you know, generative AI, while potentially being a powerful tool, also competes with the copyrighted work it is trained on and the creators behind that work. Yet the government proposes introducing a broad copyright exception for AI training, which would allow AI companies to train models on copyrighted work without a licence. Such a move would mean British creators’ work could legally be used to build highly scalable competitors to them, without their permission.
The proposal includes a ‘rights reservation’ for rights holders, which would opt them out of AI training. It says this would need to be “effective, accessible, and widely adopted”. But there are no generative AI opt-out mechanisms in existence that are effective, and there is good reason to think such a mechanism is a technical impossibility. Moreover, evidence suggests that knowledge of generative AI opt-out mechanisms among people eligible for them is low, leading to low take-up. Why is the government proposing a ‘rights reservation’ mechanism when it may be impossible to build one that is effective and when any such mechanism would unquestionably see low take-up and therefore result in many creators’ works being used in ways that are antithetical to their interests and that they oppose?
The consultation press release suggests the new copyright exception would “support [rights holders] to strike licensing deals”. But licensing for generative AI training is currently required under UK law; a new copyright exception, far from supporting licensing, would significantly undermine the licensing market, because AI companies would have so much new, legal access to training data - including many works not opted-out simply because of a lack of knowledge of the rights reservation mechanism - that they would have less need of acquiring further data through licensing.
The press release claims there is currently “uncertainty about how copyright law applies to AI”. But UK law is clear: there is no copyright exception that allows unlicensed commercial generative AI training. Can you provide more information about the source of the uncertainty that is suggested?
More than 37,000 people, including many of the UK’s leading figures in the arts, have signed a statement saying that unlicensed generative AI training is a “major, unjust threat” to people’s livelihoods. Yet the government is proposing precisely that: legalising unlicensed generative AI training.
You have said, “We stand steadfast behind our world-class creative and media industries.” As Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, you may be the person in the country best-positioned to oppose the government’s proposals, which if implemented would clearly be incredibly damaging to these industries. Will you stand behind creators and rights holders, and oppose these proposals?
Yours sincerely,
Ed Newton-Rex
