News publishers unite to fight UK government plans that will 'make it legal for AI giants to steal content'
Unprecedented 'Make it Fair' campaign calls on public to support creative industries
WHAT’S HAPPENED?
UK NEWS PUBLISHERS have swung behind a major campaign aimed at raising public awareness over government plans to dilute UK copyright laws in favour of global AI firms.
In the biggest messaging campaign of its kind, national and regional newspapers and their websites are running the same cover wrap and homepage takeover promoting the Make it Fair message.

“The government wants to change the UK’s laws to favour big tech platforms so they can use British creative content to power their AI models without our permission or payment. Let’s protect the creative industries — it’s only fair,” says the cover wrap, published on the day the government’s snap consultation on a controversial new copyright exception for AI developers is due to close.
Launching the campaign, Owen Meredith, CEO of the News Media Association, said: “We already have gold-standard copyright laws in the UK. They have underpinned growth and job creation in the creative economy across the UK, supporting some of the world’s greatest creators — artists, authors, journalists, scriptwriters, singers and songwriters to name but a few.
“And for a healthy democratic society, copyright is fundamental to publishers’ ability to invest in trusted quality journalism. The only thing which needs affirming is that these laws also apply to AI, and transparency requirements should be introduced to allow creators to understand when their content is being used. Instead, the government proposes to weaken the law and essentially make it legal to steal content. There will be no AI innovation without the high-quality content that is the essential fuel for AI models.”
Coinciding with the Make it Fair fightback is a music industry campaign launched by ethical AI training advocate Ed Newton-Rex. “One thousand UK musicians released a joint album today, recordings of empty studios, calling on the government to change course or risk empty studios becoming the norm. The government’s proposals would hand the life’s work of the UK’s talented creators — its musicians, its writers, its artists — to AI companies, for free. The government must change course and make it fair.”
The government’s consultation on copyright and AI closes tonight at 23:59 GMT.
WHY SHOULD WE CARE?
✨ Public awareness is vital since it puts pressure on politicians. Several UK media outlets have been lending their support to the campaign but an aligned approach such as Make it Fair stands a higher chance of reaching cut-through. Other creative sectors are set to support the campaign, with some high-profile executions to follow. The campaign comes as word reaches Charting Gen AI that response to the consultation has been so great that the principal government departments running the consultation have had to ask for Cabinet Office permission to use AI to analyse submissions. We further understand that detailed analyses of the responses will be conducted separately, with those from the creative sector going to the culture department and those from tech groups and their allies going to the technology department. If true — Charting is reaching out to both departments for a comment — this will fuel fears that the AI-siding technology department will hold sway, making final decisions on what goes in an eventual AI bill which it will steer through parliament.
RELATED:
Further coverage on the UK government’s controversial stance on copyright and AI and other developments that threaten to reshape the global human-made media landscape in this Friday’s Weekly Newsletter
As a UK-based amateur photographer(for the past 51 years) I'm extremely disappointed that AI is turning out to be a threat to my exclusive right of ownership of the photos I've taken and, since the advent of the digital age, posted on the internet.
I've paid for my camera equipment, my travel, accommodation, photo processing and post-processing software. I own the copyright to my photos and, therefore, I believe that I should retain exclusive rights to who sees them and how they are used. If anyone wants to use them, they should, in my opinion, have to request my permission formally and in writing. I would also expect some form of 'quid pro quo' and guaranteed limitation as to usage in return.
I get that AI needs to 'learn' from somewhere. However, that 'somewhere' should surely be stock image libraries where the image owners will be compensated for the AI algorithm scraping them from the internet - and not those of us amateurs who have spent time and not a little money honing our craft and producing things which are, and should remain, exclusively ours.
Adobe tried to pull this stunt in 2024 and was told to sod off. They had to back down. The UK government's intention might embolden them to try again, though I hope not.
There is a little hope, though. There are some software programs which seen to protect our images from just this sort of threat but acting as a 'cloaking' device against the AI bots searching out and copying our work to assimilate via machine learning. Here is one example:
https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/index.html
I haven't used it, yet, and I don't know how effective it is, but I hope it works and I hope that it becomes the tip of a huge iceberg of such software that can be used to scupper the theft of our work, at least in some significant way - if not totally.