After a lengthy consultation, the UK government has scrapped an ‘opt-out’ policy to copyright which would have favoured AI firms over creators. Finally, a sliver of good news in the ongoing generative AI saga. The UK government has scrapped plans for an ‘opt-out’ policy towards existing copyright law, which would have essentially given AI companies ... UK government scraps plans to allow AI firms to steal copyrighted work
After a lengthy consultation, the UK government has scrapped an ‘opt-out’ policy to copyright which would have favoured AI firms over creators.
Finally, a sliver of good news in the ongoing generative AI saga. The UK government has scrapped plans for an ‘opt-out’ policy towards existing copyright law, which would have essentially given AI companies free reign to ‘train’ their software on creative work without permission or compensation.
As reported by The Times (paywall), the decision comes in the wake of vocal opposition from a range of artists, including rock veterans Paul McCartney and Elton John.
Their argument is that the policy would have amounted to legalised theft, with individual creative workers likely to be unfairly impacted. Most AI firms tend to be secretive on what data has been used to train their AI models, and so it’s difficult for an artist, writer or musician to even know if their work has been taken until it’s too late.
Tech secretary Liz Kendall and culture secretary Lisa Nandy are expected to talk about the policy decision in parliament today (the 17th March).
The government first began mulling what to do about the whole AI situation in December 2024.
Its initial proposal was to ensure “AI developers have access to high-quality material to train leading AI models in the UK and support innovation across the UK AI sector” – and so the initial proposal was to allow such companies as OpenAI, Google or Meta to take whatever data they liked unless told otherwise by copyright holders.
An open consultation was put out at the same time, with the government creating an absurdly huge and complicated online survey filled with legalese. The response to that survey was overwhelmingly against the government’s proposed policy: according to The Times, just three percent of respondents supported it.
Since then, the Commons, Culture, Media and Sport Committee published its recommendation that the government abandon that earlier proposal. It argued in April 2025 that the policy could “undermine the growth” of the UK’s creative industries.
Earlier this year, the House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee published its own report on how AI might affect copyright and creative industries, which concluded that UK copyright laws should be strengthened rather than weakened.
Thankfully, the government appears to have listened. Representatives from the tech secretary are grumpy about the change in stance (one lobbyist said that the UK has “the worst copyright regime for AI training of any major economy”), but then, they would be.
Suggested product
Issue #59 (Handmade Special): Magazine, 'Bulk' 4K UHD Blu-Ray + Ben Wheatley Signed Zine
£39.99
Generative AI requires absurd amounts of other people’s work to function, and even its proponents (such as the indefatigable former MP Nick Clegg) have admitted that the sector couldn’t survive if it were forced to pay creatives a fair rate for its use.
AI firms have introduced their technologies at such a head-spinning pace that the rest of society is still racing to catch up with the implications. We’re still in the midst of a series of legal cases which could decide the future of entire creative industries, and it’s still unclear whether AI firms will be allowed to continue their ‘steal first, ask permission later’ approach to copyright in the future.
As Ed Newton-Rex, CEO of the non-profit organisation Fairly Trained, explained on Bluesky, the UK government’s abandonment of its earlier policy is a step in the right direction.
“The opt-out proposal was unfair and unworkable,” he wrote. “Many couldn’t realistically have opted out at all, and it would have affected small rights holders disproportionately negatively…
“The government should now reaffirm what the law says – that AI companies must license people’s work if they want to train on it – and commit not to change that law.”
