Pressure Increases to Ensure AI Firms Pay Up

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Pressure Increases to Ensure AI Firms Pay Up

UK Parliament vote pushes for AI-system transparency on use of scraped copyright content

Campaign efforts to force AI firms to compensate news organisations and other creative sectors for their use of copyrighted material have received a significant boost. Members of the UK Parliament’s upper chamber voted last night (13 April) by a large majority to support an amendment to the Government’s Data (Use and Access) Bill.

The amendment was tabled by Baroness Kidron, who has championed the cause of musicians, authors, journalists, artists and other content creators and businesses. The Lords approved her proposal by 272 votes to 125.

Lord Black warned his peers: “Unless we introduce transparency, control over content, and fair remuneration within a dynamic licensing market, the threat to free media is genuinely existential. And as a consequence, the threat to democracy itself is also genuinely existential.”

He added: “There is a divine spark, a creative genius in all of us. Whether we paint a picture, take a photograph, or write a piece of music, we all have something within us that allows us to express ourselves and enrich the lives of others. It is copyright that protects our ability to do that. That’s why the creative life of the UK has always been so vibrant, colourful, entertaining and powerful. Our creative industries flourish and play such a vital role in economic growth. But if you take away copyright protection, you snuff out that divine spark and endanger the livelihoods of those who depend on their creative ability for a living. If this House stands for anything, it must stand for creativity, for the divine spark—and nurture it.”

He went on to stress that the role of the press “is even more important in an age of disinformation and unverified, unregulated AI-generated content, where editorial judgment and oversight are overtaken by algorithms and the tyranny of recycled, distorted circular information. The provision of independent, verified, regulated news will be among the first victims of AI if this amendment is not passed—and if we do not act very soon. AI has the capacity utterly to destroy independent news organisations because it feasts off millions of articles written by journalists without any attribution or payment, destroying the business model that makes the free press possible.”

The Lords’ decision followed the sending of an open letter to the Prime Minister by over 400 top creatives, media leaders and businesses, urging Government support for the amendment. Signatories include Elton John, David Furnish, Paul McCartney, Florence Welch, Kate Bush, Coldplay, Antonia Fraser, Tom Stoppard, Richard Curtis, Ian McKellen, Kazuo Ishiguro, Moira Buffini, Russell T Davies, Rachel Whiteread, Shirley Bassey, Antony Gormley, Emily Eavis, Tom Dixon, John Pawson, Justine Roberts—and dozens of arts and media organisations from across the UK.

Baroness Kidron addressing the News Media Coalition General Assembly on 7 April 2025, as she champions her amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill calling for transparency and fair remuneration for creators.

During the debate, Baroness Kidron thanked the individuals, businesses and industry groups who had “emailed, written, spoken and campaigned in support of this amendment, including the UK AI Trade Group, which has shown that the grassroots UK tech industry and broader AI ecosystem—unlike the proxies of big tech—want to work with, not steal from, creators.”

She continued: “To the UK businesses that put billions into building iconic brands—who warn that this policy puts their investments at risk; to the security community, incredulous that opaque scraping may be carelessly legitimised at a time when cybersecurity is of paramount importance; and to the financial sector, both here and in the US, who have made clear to me that diminishing copyright does not, as ministers suggest, open the US market to the UK, but instead opens the UK market to anyone who wants to take our data offshore.”

The baroness, who attended the News Media Coalition’s annual general meeting in April, added: “To the news media that have put aside their differences in the interest of protecting the future of news with their Make It Fair campaign; to the Creative Rights in AI Coalition, which has demonstrated complete uniformity of sentiment across the sector—from the biggest record label to the freelance photographer just starting out; and to those in both Houses on all sides of the political spectrum who have chosen to stand with the creative industries.”

Following the amendment’s passage, the Creative Rights in AI Coalition said: “The House of Lords has reflected a chorus of voices across the UK creative economy, tech community and society, who believe rightsholders must be able to enforce their rights in the age of AI. The Government must now listen and adopt these modest amendments—designed to give the creative industries a degree of transparency over how their work is used—when the Bill returns to the Commons. It cannot come too soon to protect the livelihoods of 2.4 million UK citizens, and to allow the UK to take its place in the global AI supply chain with a dynamic licensing market for creative content.”

2025-05-14T07:48:25+00:00

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