UK Government Orders Task Forces To Work On Needs of Content-Makers and AI Systems
Members of Parliament from across the political divide today (Wednesday, May 7th) lined up to praise the news media sector’s value as one part of the UK’s ‘superpower’ content industry.
They were speaking during a Commons debate about government proposals seeking to identify how both the creative and AI sectors can both prosper at a time of accelerating technlogical change.
Supporting Primary Source Journalism: The News Media Coalition of news publishers and news agencies added its voice to calls for the UK government to persuade AI companies to respect and compensate content creators, including newsgatherers, when they use copyright material.
Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport, Conservative), said: “Our creative industries are such a phenomenal UK success story. They are our economic superpower. But more than that, our creative industries have just got so much intrinsic values. They underpin our culture, our sense of community.”
Dame Caroline, Chair of the Culture Media and Sports Committee, added: “Intellectual property showcases our nation around the world. And yet these social and economic benefits are all being put to risk by the suggested wholesale transfer of copyright to AI companies. The choice presented to us always seems to, wittingly or unwittingly, seems to pit our innovative AI sector against our world class creative industries, and indeed our media section, because it’s also worth noting that news media are very often looked in these debates.”
“But newspapers, magazines, news websites, licensed print and content online, and that in turn helps to support high quality and independent journalism, which is just so vital to underpinning our democratic life. And it’s essentially important considering recent news that the global average press freedom score has fallen to an all-time low.”
The debate was opened by Sir Chris Bryant MP who is at the centre of the government’s handling fo the AI-Copyright issue serving as both Minister of State at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). DSIT launched a consultation in December and more than 11,500 submissions were received.
The content industry will not let up
Musicians, authors, publishers and journalists yesterday (Wednesday, May 7th) gathered at the Albert Embankment, overlooking the Houses of Parliament, London to seek the ongoing support of politicians about to debate the Data (Use and Access) Bill in the Commons.
Many responses raised fears that the government’s preferred solution of content creators’ reserving their rights would not be effective in blocking their material from being scraped and AI tech firms would have no incentive to be transparent about what content had been scraped, by whom and for what purpose.
Bryant said: “In very large measure I share the concerns, namely that we want to, to make sure in this very fast-changing world that the creative industries in the UK are able to be remunerated for the work that they have produced. We’re not in the business of giving away other peoples’ work to a third party for nothing.”
He said that the ‘the only circumstance in which we would advance with the package of measures that were included in the consultation is if we were to believe that we were advancing the cause of the creative industries in the UK, rather than, providing danger or, legal peril to them.’
“We do want to get to a place where it is easier for the creative industries, whether they are a very large business with very deep pockets able to use lawyers, or a very small individual, person working in the creative industries, such as an individual photographer or painter, to be able to assert their rights, to protect their rights, to say, if they want to, “No, you can’t.. you can’t scrape my material for large language learning. Or, you can if you’ve remunerated me.”
He added: “Either way, we want to get to more licensing rather than less licensing. Although the EU said that their package was designed to deliver more licensing, it hasn’t led to more licensing, it hasn’t led to more remuneration of the creative industries and we want to avoid that pitfall. We agree, the government agrees that transparency is absolutely key.”
Samantha Niblett MP (South Derbyshire, Labour) said: ‘The UK has the potential to be the global destination for generative firms seeking to license the highest quality creative content. But to unlock that immense value, we must act now to stimulate a dynamic licensing market. The government must use this legislation to introduce meaningful transparency provisions.”
Victoria Collins MP (Harpenden and Berkhamsted, Liberal Democrat), who tabled a number of amendments to the government’s Data (Use and Access) Bill said: ‘We must protect the foundational rights of our creators in this new technological landscape. The UK’s creative industries contribute 126 billion pounds annually to our economy and employ over 2.3 million people. They are vital to our economy and our cultural identity. Yet today, creative professionals across the UK are watching with mounting alarm as AI models trained on their life’s work generate imitations without permission, payment, or even acknowledgement.”
As the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for science, innovation and technology, she said the amendments would ensure that operators of web crawlers and AI models comply with existing UK copyright law, regardless of where they’re based. But this is not about stifling innovation. Right now, creators have no way of knowing if their work has been used to train AI models. Transparency, however, is the foundation of trust. Without it, we risk not only exploiting creators, but undermining public confidence in these powerful new technologies. The principle is simple.
“If an AI system is trained using someone’s creative work, they deserve to know about it and have a say in how it’s used. This isn’t just fair to creators. It’s essential for building that AI ecosystem that the public trust. By supporting new clause four, we can ensure the development of AI happens in the open, allowing for proper compensation, attribution, and accountability.”
Bryant responded to accusations that the government believed the content industry is against innovation. He said: “I just want to knock on the head the idea that any government minister thinks that the creative industries are Luddites…many creative industries use all sorts of technical innovation every single day of the week. They are not Luddites at all.
He added: ‘They’re the greatest innovators that we have in the country.”
