The year is barely a month old and already 2025 is being variously described by digital technologists worldwide as: ‘A Year of AI Hype and Quiet Evolution’, ‘Maybe the Year of AI Legislation: Will We See Consensus Rules or a Patchwork?’, ‘The year of Agentic AI’ and ‘The Age of AI: will 2025 be our last normal year?’.
On 13 January 2025, Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave a keynote speech launching the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan, introduced as ‘The defining opportunity of our generation … the global race of our lives … Britain will be one of the great AI superpowers … we’re number one in Europe for AI investment’. Immediately on taking office last July, Starmer commissioned an independent review into ‘how we seize the opportunities of AI’, all the recommendations of which he committed his government to implement.
None of these significant recommendations specifically addressed the complex matter of artist’s copyright – understandably because a separate consultation on ‘Copyright and AI’ was initiated by the government on 17 December 2024, inviting responses by 25 February 2025. This ten-week consultation period, including the two national festive weeks, evidently drove many MPs to seek ministerial assurances during Parliament’s first week of sitting in the new year.
On 8 January 2025 in the House of Commons, the minister of state for media, tourism and creative industries, Chris Bryant, responded to MPs’ concerns that the outcomes of its current AI consultation could leave creators facing challenges to protect and monetise their copyright. In response, the minister highlighted that creating licensing revenue for creatives was a key goal of the government’s proposals in the consultation document. ‘Our consultation’, Bryant stated, ‘is designed to do two specific things: to make sure there is legal certainty for AI developers and creative industries alike, and to make sure there is more licensing of copyright material by AI developers.’
The minister was reminded that the average UK visual artist earned below the minimum wage and relied on their copyright royalties to continue their practices, and was asked to give assurances that ‘the plans for a copyright exception for AI learning will not further contribute to that financial instability and weaken the lifeblood of our creative economy’. The minister replied: ‘We want to make sure – as we did in the last Labour government, when we introduced the Artist’s Resale Right [in 2006] – that artists can earn a living from their art. That is what we are determined to do. Just as last year New Zealand and Australia entered into the same [reciprocal] agreement for an Artist’s Resale Right, we want to make sure that there is a future revenue stream for every single artist in this country.’
Bryant was asked to agree that transparency was crucial if creators were to understand where their works were being used by AI developers and, if so, to confirm that the government would legislate on transparency, whatever the outcome of the consultation on copyright reform. The minister agreed that transparency was a key element of the consultation. ‘We have presented a package because we want to ensure there is a win-win here,’ Bryant declared. ‘We want AI developers to have the legal certainty that they need to develop their products in the UK as UK producers, and for creative industries to know when their works are being used, so that if they want to say no they can say no, and if they want to say yes they will be properly remunerated for it.’
The consultation’s drivers are the rapid development of AI technology in the UK and across the world, and especially how existing copyright frameworks should be applied to activities that underpin the training of large AI models – training that requires a licence from relevant economic and moral rights holders who have exclusive control over how their works are used. Currently, such frameworks do not meet the needs of UK’s creative industries or AI sectors, for the following reasons.
Copyright works are used to train AI without permission, resulting in loss of royalty income. AI developers are not transparent about content being used and how it is acquired, making it difficult to enforce copyright. Moreover, AI firms in the UK are unclear about the legal risks of accessing training data, which stunts AI innovation and adoption in the UK and drives leading AI developers to train in copyright jurisdictions overseas with clearer or more permissive rules. Because copyright law applies in the jurisdiction where copying takes place, AI developers are not obliged to respect rights under UK law.
The consultation firmly avers: ‘We cannot allow this to continue. We need to act now to help accelerate growth in our creative industries and in our AI sectors – both of which are essential parts of the government’s Industrial Strategy.’ The government seeks views on how to achieve this by working in partnership with both sectors, and proposes a three-fold approach that aims to: enhance rights holders’ control of their material and their ability to be remunerated for its use; support wide access to high-quality material to drive development of leading AI models in the UK; and secure greater transparency from AI developers to build trust with creators, creative industries and consumers.
The Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS) will be providing a response to the consultation on behalf of UK artists, drawing on concerns raised in its recent AI & Artists Report reflecting the views of artists and their representatives. The report revealed that the overwhelming majority of artists want to decide if their work can be used for AI training, while showing a willingness to consent to such uses, provided that regulation and compensation mechanisms are in place to ensure that their rights are respected. DACS believes that consent, control and remuneration for artists’ intellectual property rights should be central to the UK’s goals for AI development; that the onus should not be on rights holders to prevent AI firms from commercially exploiting their data without permission or remuneration; and that any solution in the UK must enable artists to effectively and easily exercise their rights and receive fair compensation for use of their work.
The government’s ‘Copyright and AI: Consultation’ document is available from the Intellectual Property Office, to which responses should be received by midnight on 25 February 2025 at: copyrightconsultation@ipo.gov.uk.
© Henry Lydiate 2025