UK working group unable to agree AI copyright code
February 13, 2024
On 6 February, the UK Government confirmed that a working group overseen by the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) had failed to reach agreement on a code of practice on copyright and Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In its response to ‘A pro-innovation approach to AI regulation’ (here) the UK Government said:
28. Creative industries and media organisations have particular concerns regarding copyright protections in the era of generative AI. Creative industries and rights holders are concerned at the large-scale use of copyright protected content for training AI models and have called for assurance that their ability to retain autonomy and control over their valuable work will be protected. At the same time, AI developers have emphasised that they need to be able to easily access a wide range of high-quality datasets to develop and train cutting-edge AI systems in the UK.
29. The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) convened a working group made up of rights holders and AI developers on the interaction between copyright and AI. The working group has provided a valuable forum for stakeholders to share their views. Unfortunately, it is now clear that the working group will not be able to agree an effective voluntary code.
30. DSIT [Department for Science Innovation and Technology] and DCMS [Department for Culture, Media & Sport] ministers will now lead a period of engagement with the AI and rights holder sectors, seeking to ensure the workability and effectiveness of an approach that allows the AI and creative sectors to grow together in partnership. The government is committed to the growth of our world-leading creative industries and we recognise the importance of ensuring AI development supports, rather than undermines, human creativity, innovation, and the provision of trustworthy information.
31. Our approach will need to be underpinned by trust and transparency between parties, with greater transparency from AI developers in relation to data inputs and the attribution of outputs having an important role to play. Our work will therefore also include exploring mechanisms for providing greater transparency so that rights holders can better understand whether content they produce is used as an input into AI models. The government wants to work closely with rights holders and AI developers to deliver this. Critical to all of this work will also be close engagement with international counterparts who are also working to address these issues. We will soon set out further proposals on the way forward.
There is information about working group, including its members and terms of reference, here.