Decision day for AI transparency as creators' champion inflicts devastating blow on UK government
Fifth consecutive defeat in the House of Lords delivers final ultimatum to ministers
THE UK GOVERNMENT has been forced to finally decide its stance on AI transparency after suffering its fifth consecutive defeat over its plans for artificial intelligence and copyright. By 221 votes to 116 the upper house defiantly backed creators’ champion Baroness Kidron’s amendment to a data bill giving emergency protections to rightsholders whose works have been used to train AI models.
The bill — a vehicle used to add the transparency measures — has been stuck in parliamentary limbo since January when Baroness Kidron inflicted her first defeat, amending it to bolster the UK’s copyright regime while the Keir Starmer government was still consulting on plans to dilute it in favour of the hi-techs.
The government used its large Commons majority to remove the amendments, only to see them added back in the Lords. The bill has since been ping-ponging back and forth between both houses to the frustration of ministers who need its other provisions to become law as soon as possible.
To break the impasse the government must now choose between one of three options: it could accept the amendments, which would force the government to report the scale of stolen copyrighted material and publish a draft bill forcing the hi-techs to reveal which works had been used; it could come up with alternative transparency proposals; or it could ditch the data bill altogether.
Peers had last night been urged to vote against the Kidron amendments and accept a series of concessions that include working groups looking into transparency, licensing and technical standards; reports on models trained overseas and enforcement; and an economic impact assessment. Baroness Kidron — the award-winning filmmaker Beeban Kidron — told the upper house she was “disappointed, frustrated and, to be honest, quite sad” to again be making the point that creators needed protections now and not in years to come. She had asked repeatedly what the government was “going to do to stop the work of creatives being stolen right now”. “The answer is nothing,” she exclaimed.
“The government is aware of the stealing, aware of the law, and aware that creative work morally and financially belongs to its creator. The government is aware that the success of our creative industries depends in large part on the copyright regime, and that mass theft is breaking the press, the arts and other IP-rich businesses, and hampering the UK AI community,” she said. “Inaction is not neutral. It is hurting our community, and it is hurting the government’s future prosperity.”
Directly addressing the government benches Baroness Kidron said this was the Lords’ “last chance to ask the government to provide a meaningful solution”. Unless there was a “tacit deal with Big Tech” it made no sense to delay transparency measures “on behalf of our second-biggest industrial sector when it is crying out for our support”. Were the government to prevail it would be a “catastrophic day for the creative industries and a catastrophic error of judgment”.
Baroness Kidron said she’d had “a sleepless night wondering about this moment and what to do”. “I have decided that I am prepared to lose, because I know that there are thousands of people out there who are asking their elected government to stand by their property, their livelihood and our second most important wealth-building industrial sector. If we do not do that now, we know no one else will.”
✨COMMENT: During exchanges in the short debate the government front bench was asked whether the reason why ministers weren’t listening was that the issue of copyright and AI was potentially bound up in trade talks with the Trump administration. Digital economy minister Baroness Jones said: “I make it absolutely clear that there are no side deals in any agreement in the trade deal with the US.” We’ll return to that quote should any such deals with the White House or Silicon Valley — which after all is now calling the AI policy shots in the US — transpire. In the meantime, the ball is now in the government’s court. Ping pong is over. It’s time to decide who to back: creators or Big Tech. Which will it be?
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◾️Further reaction and the key developments that threaten to reshape the global AI regulatory landscape will be in this Friday’s Weekly Newsletter.
Yeah I don't think Big Tech needs any support at all. It's weird that people are even having a debate about this, when they claim to be a close to 10 trillion dollars industry. How much more greedy can they be?