The UK Government recently published its latest report, Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, together with an Economic Impact Assessment. Following consideration of thousands of responses to consultations over the past two years, the report concludes that there is no current consensus on balancing AI innovation with creator’s rights; and that further work is required to monitor international developments, including the outcomes of copyright lawsuits currently in train.
The government’s approach may be criticised for being over-cautious and indecisive. However, the report comprehensively explains: ‘We must take the time needed to get this right. We will not introduce reforms to copyright law until we are confident that they will meet our objectives for the economy and UK citizens’. In other words, AI-related copyright reforms need to strike a sound balance between: ensuring that copyright owners are fairly rewarded for the economic value of their works, and are protected against unlawful and unfair use of them; and, at the same time, allowing AI developers to access high-quality content.
For the past decade, governments worldwide have been struggling to keep pace with the impact of rapid developments in artificial intelligence (AI). Successive UK governments have reviewed AI matters since 2017, and have consulted creators and intellectual property right holders, developers of AI models and applications, academics, researchers, cultural heritage organisations, and legal professionals. The UK’s current copyright framework is the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (CDPA). Fundamental questions are whether and, if so, how the CDPA should be amended to take into account advances in AI.
This is a vast and complex endeavour, covering a wide range of interdependent and interrelated issues – political, economic, social, technological, ethical, legal – as they affect both creators and would-be users of digitised text, and sound and image. There are three essential issues: first, commercial industries’ unrestricted use of authors’ copyright works to train AI tools (using copyright-protected artistic works without permission); second, authors using AI tools to make new works, and whether wholly computer-generated output is, or should be, protected by copyright; third, if so protected, who is, or should be, the author/first copyright owner.
The report devotes most of its review to the first issue, including consideration of views addressed by leading creative organisations and authors and performers; and in particular, of challenges to the government’s stated preference for introducing an author’s so-called ‘opt-out’ for text and data mining (TDM) of copyright-protected works. An ‘opt-out’ mechanism is a legal and technical process, which would put the onus on copyright owners to ‘reserve their rights’ and prohibit the automated analysis of their content for training AI models. In other words, when authors made their works accessible online, unless they explicitly ‘opted out’ by reserving their rights, AI developers would be generally permitted to mine text and data of their works.
An overwhelming majority of respondents rejected the proposed opt-out. Creators asserted that opt-out would undermine the value of their works, and would be impractical for them to execute. The AI and research sectors considered it would be more restrictive than the approach taken in other countries, and would not achieve the aim of making the UK internationally competitive for AI training and development. Accordingly, the government abandoned the opt-out preference, and will publish a review of mechanisms for creators to control their works online. A working group will be established, with independent and smaller creative organisations: to explore licensing creator’s copyright-protected content; and whether there is a role for government support.
The report also addresses the second and third related issues: uncertainty of copyright protection and ownership, when authors use AI tools to create new works. Currently, the CDPA has special provisions that protect original literary, dramatic, musical, or artistic work ‘generated by a computer in circumstances such that there is no human author’. Protection lasts for 50 years from the end of the year of generation; and the author is deemed to be the person ‘by whom the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work are undertaken’. In the case of a general-purpose AI that generates output in response to a user prompt, the report suggests that ‘the author will usually be the person who inputted the prompt’ – but the legal meaning of this deemed author provision has not been judicially settled.
The CDPA’s computer-generated provisions were enacted four decades ago, when computer technology was rudimentary. Computer-generated works were challenging and costly in the 1980s, but AI has since developed significantly, and can now produce outputs in large quantities without the same challenge or cost. And many content types that were originally intended to be copyright-protected by these provisions, are now more likely to be protected by other rights (such as the new database right introduced into UK law in the 1990s).
Moreover, many consultees also highlighted an apparent contradiction in the CDPA’s provision for computer-generated original works with ‘no human author’. The ‘human mind’ copyright doctrine is a longstanding and fundamental basis of most copyright regimes worldwide; and is why copyright laws of so many countries have not made provision giving copyright protection to works wholly generated by computer technology. Most consultation respondents agreed that there should not be copyright protection for works created wholly by AI; but that works created using AI as a tool should be protected – in other words, AI-assisted works should be eligible for copyright protection like any other original work.
The report concluded that the government intends to remove copyright protection for wholly computer-generated works, saying ‘copyright should focus on human creativity’. Removal has been deferred, pending the government’s monitoring future use and impact of this protection.
Overall, the report demonstrates the government’s determination to make progress on AI issues for the benefit of the UK economy, to work closely with parliamentarians and all stakeholders throughout this process, and to shape the UK for decades to come. As Liz Kendall, the secretary of state for science, innovation and technologyassured Parliament, ‘Our creative industries are the best in the world … They are one of our greatest exports, at the heart of our Industrial Strategy … By taking time to get this right, we can make Britain the best place in the world for art, literature, music and filmmaking, and be the go-to country for safe, responsible AI – the kind that lifts our economy and brings opportunity to millions’.
© Henry Lydiate 2026