Asked by
To ask His Majesty's Government, following the recommendation of
the Vallance review of the regulation of emerging digital
technologies, whether they plan to set out a policy position on
the relationship between intellectual property rights and the
training of generative AI models.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Business and Trade and Department for Science, Information and
Technology () (Lab)
My Lords, the AI and creative sectors are both essential to our
mission to grow the UK economy. Our goal is to find the right
balance between fostering innovation in AI while ensuring
protection for creators and our vibrant creative industries. This
is an important but complex area and we are very aware of the
need to resolve the issues. We are working with stakeholders to
understand their views and will set out our next steps soon.
(LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply, but the Prime
Minister, in a recent letter to the News Media Association,
said:
“We recognise the basic principle that publishers should have
control over and seek payment for their work, including when
thinking about the role of AI”.
Will the Minister therefore agree with the House of Lords
Communications and Digital Committee and affirm the rights of
copyright owners in relation to their content used for training
purposes on large language models? Will she rule out any widening
of the text and data-mining exception and include in any future
AI legislation a duty on developers to keep records of the
material and data used to train their AI models?
(Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the Lords committee that has
considered this issue. We are keen to make progress in this area
but it is important that we get it right. The previous Government
had this on their table for a long time and were not able to
resolve it. The Intellectual Property Office, DSIT and DCMS are
working together to try to find a way forward that will provide a
solution for creative media and the AI sectors. Ministers—my
colleagues and Feryal Clark—held round
tables with representatives of the creative industries and the AI
sector recently, and we are looking at how we can take this
forward to resolve the many issues and questions that the noble
Lord has quite rightly posed for me today.
The (CB)
My Lords, in the absence of legislation or policy it is left to
the courts to wrestle with whether the training of large language
models infringes copyright. For over two years now, cases have
been progressing in the US, in Europe and in the UK. A German
first-instance decision recently found in favour of the
machines—it will be appealed. Noting my interests as an IP
litigator, do the Government believe, as I do, that English
common law is capable of resolving this tricky issue?
(Lab)
My Lords, the Government are clear that copyright law must be
respected when content is used to train AI models. If copies are
made of protected work, licences must be required from the
copyright owner unless a specific copyright exception applies.
The problem is that the law does not yet apply equally to
generative AI models, and that is the issue we are grappling
with. Our view is that this should not necessarily be left to the
law; unfortunately, it takes a long time for these legal cases to
be resolved. We are trying to find a way forward that will be
fair to everybody but that does not require the long legislative
process that I know the noble Earl is all too aware of.
(Con)
My Lords, I declare my technology interests as set out in the
register. Does the Minister agree that this is not just a
question of fairness? We must have a respected, remunerated,
consented, dynamic licensing market for IP and copyrighted works
for both the benefit of IP and creatives and for a flourishing AI
market in the UK.
(Lab)
The noble Lord is quite right: we have to find a way forward that
reflects the importance of both these sectors to our economy. The
creative industries are one of the UK's most powerful economic
activities, worth £124 billion in GVA at the moment, so they are
hugely important. We know that we have to respect the creative
sector and the journalists working in it, but equally, we know
that the future will be about an enhanced AI system. More and
more businesses in the UK are now using AI, so that is the way
forward and we have to find a way through this, but there is not
a simple answer. I assure noble Lords that my colleagues,
particularly and , are very aware of this
issue. It has to be resolved but we would just ask for a little
bit more space to allow us to make some progress.
(Lab)
My Lords, the Minister rightly referenced the importance of the
cultural sector not only to our national life but particularly to
our economy. Does not the music sector, in particular, require a
pipeline of talent and the protection, therefore, of the original
work to enable people to develop their skills but also to make a
living? Should this not be a crucial part of any such policy?
(Lab)
My noble friend makes a very good point, and I can assure him
that my colleague is very aware of this; he will
know of his passion for this issue. We are working on finding a
way forward, and I can assure my noble friend that no stone will
remain unturned as we try to do so. I hope to come back with a
further progress report in the very near future.
Noble Lords
My Lords—
(Lab Co-op)
My Lords, shall we hear from the former Leader of the House next?
Then we will hear from the Cross Benches.
(Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Lord. Copyright clearly affects a
lot of different sectors, but given the value of real-time news
to the AI platforms, particularly in the production of services
and products that they offer to consumers, what steps are the
Government taking to ensure that there is a mutually beneficial
deal between the platforms and news organisations, so that we can
safeguard the content that will be so important to the continuing
advancement of this technology?
(Lab)
The noble Baroness will know that there was an attempt to come to
a voluntary agreement on this under the previous Government that
would have been a way forward for both sectors. Unfortunately,
that voluntary agreement did not work out, so the ball has
bounced back into our court. The noble Baroness is absolutely
right about journalism: if we do not have a vibrant journalistic
bedrock for this society, we do not really have a democratic
society; we need to know what is going on in the UK and the
world. The noble Baroness is right that we need to protect
journalists: we need to ensure that their work is rewarded and
paid in the right way. We are working on this. I am sorry that I
am beginning to sound a bit like a stuck record, but I assure
noble Lords that we are working at pace to try to resolve these
issues.
(CB)
My Lords, many creators sold their IP rights to big publishers
before the advent of large language models. Since then, those
publishers have been exploiting creators' work for the training
of large language models and the creation of new AI performances,
but they have failed to recompense the original creators. Does
the Minister think that creators' performance and moral rights
should be updated in the face of the new use by AI of their
work?
(Lab)
That is exactly what we are trying to achieve. Creatives need to
be properly respected and rewarded for their activities. We need
to make sure that when scraping and web-crawling takes place,
there is transparency about that and the originators of the
material are properly recognised and rewarded.
(Con)
My Lords, as the Minister knows, AI model training and associated
copyright infringement can occur anywhere in the world,
effectively offshoring copyright infringement. So while we
welcome the Minister for AI's statement that the Government will
end uncertainty around the use of copyright content for AI, I am
afraid I have another tricky question to add. How do we intend to
do that in the space of protecting UK content from international
offshoring?
(Lab)
The noble Lord is quite right: not only is our material used
internationally, but UK-based AI sites are using internationally
created material. So this is an international problem—we cannot
resolve it just within the UK. We are working closely with
international partners, and it is a shared priority for
Governments across the world. The Intellectual Property Office is
engaging with international partners and other offices, including
the World Intellectual Property Organization, to try to advance
discussions on this issue. As the noble Lord said, it is an
important international issue. We cannot resolve it on our own.
