UK government's AI plans dealt blow as peers vote to reinforce copyright regime
'Everyone should now join the fight by responding to the copyright and AI consultation,' Baroness Kidron tells Charting Gen AI
THE UK GOVERNMENT suffered a defeat over measures to protect creators’ copyrighted content from being used for AI model training without their consent. The move to bolster the UK’s copyright regime comes as the Keir Starmer government continues to consult on plans to dilute it by creating a new copyright exception for generative model training.
By 145 votes in favour and 126 against, peers backed a package of amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill forcing AI crawlers to observe UK copyright law, reveal their identities and purpose, and let creatives know if their copyrighted works have been scraped. Tabling the amendments Baroness Kidron — the multi-award winning film director and producer, and digital rights campaigner — said they would counter “the widespread theft of IP by AI companies who use it as raw material for their products”.
Lady Kidron — who sits as an independent in the UK’s upper house — told peers the amendments would help “protect the incomes of the UK’s second most valuable industrial sector”. However, the government’s proposed copyright exception would cause “devastation” by giving away “the property rights of those who earned them”.
“We have before us the most extraordinary sight of a Labour government transferring wealth directly from 2.4 million individual creatives, SMEs and UK brands on the promise of vague riches in the future,” said Lady Kidron, who advises the Institute for Ethics in AI at Oxford University. “There is a role in our economy for AI, there is a role in our economy for companies headquartered elsewhere, there is a role in our economy for new AI models and there is an opportunity of growth in the combination of AI and creative industries. But this forced marriage, on slave terms, is not it.”
Lady Kidron also attacked the Conservative opposition which “for the most part” was “sitting on its hands” rather than protecting “the property rights of citizens and creative industries”. Lord Black, deputy chairman of the Telegraph Media Group, said it was “incredibly short-sighted” of his party to not support the amendments. “An effective, enforceable and comprehensive copyright regime is absolutely fundamental to the sustainability of a free, independent media. Without it, the media cannot survive,” he told peers.
Supporting the amendments, Lord Clement-Jones — Liberal Democrat spokesperson on science, innovation and technology — said the government’s stance started “from the false premise of legal uncertainty” over copyright and AI. “This is completely untrue,” said Lord Clement-Jones. “The use of copyrighted content without a licence by generative AI firms is theft on a mass scale and there is no objective case for a new text and data mining exception.”
Lady Kidron’s amendments were passed with the support of Labour and Conservative peers rebelling against their front benches.
Commenting on her victory, Lady Kidron told Charting Gen AI: “There were powerful speeches from across the house, and enough people stayed home and enough broke from their whip to get it over the line — and I thank them for that. Now the creative industries have a ‘preferred option’ of their own. And we all hope that the government sees sense, does the maths, and acts as it should for the benefit of its citizens, and not be enthralled to a tech sector based in Silicon Valley.
She added: “Creative industries are wealth creators, 2.4 million jobs and a whole lot of joy. Everyone who has ever enjoyed a book, play, film, poem, piece of music, theatre, article or play should join this fight and respond to the consultation backing the amendments, and backing the creative industry property rights.”
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