‘Currently, developers are subject to copyright law when using large data sets to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. In December 2024, the government published proposals to change the way in which this material could be used. This included 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’ (House of Lords Library, January 2025 https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/copyright-and-artificial-intelligence-impact-on-creative-industries/)
Recently, the Government opened a consultation that is expected to make it easier for AI companies to take what they want. This is not good, in my opinion, since it will force rights holders to ’opt out’, which, says Andrew Orlowski in the Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/10/28/how-big-tech-barons-plotting-steal-british-creativity/), will have the effect of turning existing copyright law on its head. As he says, publishers, authors, musicians, visual artists and photographers are horrified that the Government could ‘give birth to the most permissive pirate regime in the world’. Ed Newton-Rex, a musician and former AI developer turned campaigner, has said, ‘The major economic opportunity does not come from exploiting the life’s work of the world’s creators without permission. We can be world leaders in AI for healthcare, defence, logistics and science … without destroying our creative industries by upending copyright law’.
Again, in the words of Andrew Orlowski, ‘A society that gives up on respect for individual expression and chooses to worship a mimicry machine instead probably deserves the fate that … awaits.’
