Sunday, February 23, 2025

Consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence ENDS TUESDAY

I'm extremely late to this topic so this is a wakeup call for anybody else like me who did not realise this consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence was happening

The consultation ends on Tuesday 25th February i.e. YOU HAVE TWO DAYS LEFT TO COMMENT. You have two days left if you have a view on how this might impact your career or your income. (I may update this post)
  • You can access the consultation here. Responses are by way of a survey of questions. (https://ipoconsultations.citizenspace.com/ipo/consultation-on-copyright-and-ai/)
    • respond to the questions in the survey
    • say how it would affect you
    • or send a letter saying what you want to say via an email
  • You can also submit your response by email to: copyrightconsultation@ipo.gov.uk
  • The deadline to respond is 11:59pm on Tuesday 25 February 2025.
Cover of the formal Consultation Document published by the Government
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
Ref: ISBN 978-1-5286-5330-5, E03259461 12/24, CP 1205
PDF, 1.23 MB, 40 pages

The consultation arises because of what has been characterised as
pressure to amend the UK’s copyright laws to make it easier for predominantly American tech companies to train their AI models on other people’s creative work without permission, acknowledgment or payment. Creative industries are among the UK’s crown jewels – and AI is out to steal them | The Guardian
Below you can read about
  • what the government has said
  • how to respond - according to DACS and AOI
  • places where you can find out what others are saying
What I RECOMMEND YOU DO is read carefully the recommendations of how to respond from both 
  • DACS (a "not for profit" set up to maximise and collect copyright income) and the 
  • Association of Illustrators (AOI) 

What the Government has said

This government firmly believes that our musicians, writers, artists and other creatives should have the ability to know and control how their content is used by AI firms and be able to seek licensing deals and fair payment. Achieving this, and ensuring legal certainty, will help our creative and AI sectors grow and innovate together in partnership.
Currently, developers are subject to copyright law when using large data sets to train artificial intelligence (AI) models. In December 2024, the government published proposals to change the way in which this material could be used. This included the establishment of a copyright exemption for AI developers and a new rights reservation model whereby copyright holders would need to opt-out from having their material used for training AI.
This includes the following in 3. Initial responses to AI and copyright consultation
The Creative Rights in AI Coalition is a campaign group formed in December 2024 by organisations including the Society of Authors, the Publishers Association, the Association of Illustrators and the Association of Photographers.[16] It has criticised the proposal to introduce a rights reservation model, arguing AI developers should only be able to use copywritten material with the express permission of the rights holder.[17] Instead, it said the government should prioritise enforcement of the existing copyright laws to protect copyright holders from their work being used for training AI systems without their permission. However, the Creative Rights in AI Coalition welcomed the proposals to increase transparency of how copyrighted work is being used when training AI models.

Responding to the consultation, the chair of the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee, Dame Caroline Dinenage, issued a statement noting “widespread concerns” within the creative industries regarding the use of their material to train AI models without their consent.[18] She said the government needed to ensure that its final proposals would protect creator’s rights.
A law firm (Lewis Silkin) summarised what the Government is proposing as....
the Government's preferred option is to adopt a new text-and-data mining (TDM) exception to copyright in the UK that will allow AI companies to mine copyright protected works for AI training purposes provided the rightsholder has not "reserved their rights" (or "opted-out"), underpinned by transparency measures to enable rightsholders to understand and manage the use of their works. 

How to respond - by various Arts Bodies

The general consensus is that artists should opt for Option 1. This provides the best protection and should achieve a favourable outcome for creators
‘Strengthen copyright requiring licensing in all cases’ 

 

Creative Rights in AI Coalition


This is an activist organisation specifically aiming to protect artists' rights

The home page of their website https://www.creativerightsinai.co.uk/ indicates what they see as the main problems
The UK creative industries generate well over £100 billion annually. We have, quite literally, earned the right to have our voice heard. The key to that success, and future growth, is copyright law.

Retaining the UK’s gold standard copyright protections - and ensuring the law is enforceable and respected in the face of the challenges posed by GAI - will create incentives for GAI developers to enter into licence agreements with rights holders, ensuring a steady flow of quality, human-authored works for GAI training. Without proper control and remuneration for creators, investment in high-quality content will fall. GAI innovation will inevitably stall, and value will drain from both the tech and creative industries which contribute so much to the UK economy and quality of life.

DACS (The Design and Artists Copyright Society)

DACS is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to championing, protecting, and managing the rights of artists and maximising their royalties.

For further information on the consultation, see our summary of what visual artists and rightsholders need to know.
The Government’s approach puts UK creativity and human expression at risk. The idea that UK artists could have their entire output copied then badly mimicked by AI algorithms, which then compete with them for their livelihoods, is a deeply dystopian one. The Government should not be supportive of this.
This is what DACS recommends you say. 

Association of Illustrators (AOI)


The Association of Illustrators is the professional organisation for paid illustrators in the UK. Some extracts from its comments
The Copyright and Artificial Intelligence consultation proposes an exception to your copyright that would allow commercial use of text and data mining – the ‘scraping’ of your work from the internet to train generative AI by AI developers – for no payment. (AOI) 
the AOI urges all illustrators to respond to the consultation directly and share their views. This isn’t just another policy paper – it’s a pivotal moment that could reshape how creators protect and control their work. (AOI)

This is what their survey of illustrators says

A striking 92.65% of illustrators say attempting to opt out of scraping would be practically impossible without damaging their business. The task would be too time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially considering they don’t control ‘downstream copies’ such as images on client websites – directly challenging the government’s proposed Option 3 approach.
This is what AOI recommends you say:
it’s essential for individual creators to make their voices heard too.

Artists' Union England

This is what AUE says
The rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has implications for AUE members whose will be directly affected by the increasingly sophisticated way that AI systems generate visual materials. These systems have been trained on vast quantities of copyrighted information without any permission sought from the creators. This constitutes an asset stripping of individual artists and the wider cultural sector, to enrich a very small number of technology companies. Whilst AI can be a useful tool in making art, AUE feels it poses a very real risk to artists’ livelihoods in the way the technology is currently being developed.
The AUE Executive, in line with other Creative Unions, are recommending to our members we should support Option 1 which states ‘Strengthen copyright requiring licensing in all cases’ as the best approach to achieve a favourable outcome for creators. (Question 5)

Where you can find out more about what others are saying

  • UK copyright law consultation ‘fixed’ in favour of AI firms, peer says | The Guardian 
Kidron’s amendments aim to tackle the unauthorised use of copyrighted material to train the AI models that underpin products such as chatbots and image generators.

The amendments, which can be removed by the government in the Commons, subject AI companies to UK copyright law wherever they are based and allow copyright owners to know when, where and how their work is used in AI systems. It also requires the naming of web crawlers that are used to scrape copyrighted data for use in AI models.

There are decades when nothing happens (as Lenin is – wrongly – supposed to have said) and weeks when decades happen. We’ve just lived through a few weeks 
We have produced a briefing on how to respond to the consultation and the key points that need to be made. Read the briefing.
Please send your responses in a personal capacity and explain how they will affect you as an individual creator.
You do not need to answer every question of the consultation and can just write a letter explaining your concerns if you prefer.
Apparently the Government has been overwhelmed by the number of responses to the consultation.





Posted by Making A Mark on Sunday, February 23, 2025
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