The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport (CMS) Committee has advised the government to abandon its preference for a data-mining exception for AI training with rights reservation model, which has been proposed in the government’s Artificial Intelligence (Regulation) Bill. The committee instead said it should require AI developers to license any copyrighted works before using them to train their AI models.
The committee has today released the British film and high-end television (HETV) report, which, while it focuses on the film and HETV industries, would have repercussions across the wider creative sectors, including publishing.
The report stated: “Our world-class creatives are the lifeblood of the UK’s film and HETV sectors. However, the rapid growth of generative AI technologies threatens their earnings and future employment opportunities. This is not just an issue for one part of the industry: it about real lives and livelihoods, and the impact will be felt by the most vulnerable.”
In the parliamentary inquiry published today (10th April), the CMS Committee also warned against the proposed “opt-out” regime, suggesting that it stands to damage the UK’s reputation. “Getting the balance between AI development and copyright wrong will undermine the growth of our film and HETV sectors, and wider creative industries,” the report reads. “Proceeding with an ‘opt-out’ regime stands to damage the UK’s reputation among inward investors for our previously gold-standard copyright and IP framework.”
It continued to warn against prioritising generative AI, and encouraged guidelines to protect human creativity, adding: “Industry guidelines based around protecting human creativity in the use of generative AI are welcome, but the film and TV sectors are calling out for help to embrace the growth potential of generative AI in a way that is fair, responsible and legally compliant. Getting the balance between AI development and copyright wrong will undermine the growth of our film and HETV sectors, and wider creative industries.”
The committee recommended that within the next six months the government “should also conduct a review of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and the UK’s GDPR framework to consider whether further legislation is needed to prevent unlicensed use of data for AI purposes”.
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