On 13 January 2025, the Prime Minister announced the government’s artificial intelligence (AI) Opportunities Action Plan. In his speech, Sir Keir Starmer, said that government using AI across the UK will boost growth and help them deliver services more efficiently.
In the plan, the government states that they will reform the UK text and data mining regime so that it is ‘at least as competitive as the EU’, saying that ‘the EU has moved forward with an approach that is designed to support AI innovation while also enabling rights holders to have control over the use of content they produce.’
This announcement comes, controversially, in the middle of the government’s open consultation on Copyright and AI, which is due to close on 25 February 2025.
The SoA will be gathering evidence from its members to feed into its response to the consultation, which opened in December 2024.
The Society of Authors response
Responding to the plan, SoA Chief Executive Anna Ganley said:
The UK already has a strong copyright regime. We don’t need reform, we need transparency on the works and data tech companies have used to train their large language models (LLMs), we need effective ways for rightsholders to enforce their rights when tech companies haven’t complied with existing laws, and we need this position to be firmly supported by government.
The proposal of opt-outs places an unfair burden on individual creators and we would hope that lessons would be learned from the shortcomings of the EU AI Act. Many of the organisations in the EU are reporting inadequacies in the EU system and we are alarmed that this evidence is being entirely disregarded by our government.
We understand that the government wants economic growth and the UK to embrace the opportunities of AI, but to launch this action plan in the midst of the Copyright and AI Consultation feels disingenuous and implies government has already made up its mind.
Together with the rest of the creative industries, we’re calling on government to provide assurances that all options are still on the table.
The SoA has long campaigned for the UK government to uphold and protect copyright laws and support the dynamic licensing model for the fair use of creative work in building generative AI systems.
The Creators’ Rights Alliance response
The Creators’ Rights Alliance (CRA), a coalition of creator-led groups, trade associations and unions, of which the SoA is a member, and who together representing over 500,000 creator members, has responded to the plan.
The CRA said:
CRA members welcome new and innovative technologies, such as AI that enable human creators to produce inspiring work that benefits both the businesses and the audiences who enjoy it. It is clear that as a technological tool it can improve data collection and efficiency. But advancements should not ignore the rights of creators, safety risks and the large-scale environmental impact of vast data centres at a time when the government has committed to Net Zero.
This report was released in the midst of the government’s AI and Copyright Consultation and yet it recommends that current AI Copyright law is inadequate. This is not the case. It is not the law which is inadequate, but the behaviour of AI tech companies, who have taken creators’ content without permission to train their AI models. The UK has existing laws to protect copyright works including performances, images, music, and the written word – many are already being illicitly accessed and used without the rights holders’ permission. Huge datasets of illegally-scraped content have already been used for AI-generating content and the large language lodels (LLM). It is hugely disappointing the plan does not offer any solutions in this regard.
The CRA was formed in 2001 as a united voice for creators, made up of the major organisations representing 500,000 creators in the UK.
Anna Ganley, the SoA’s Chief Executive, is the current Chair of the CRA.
The Creative Rights in AI Coalition response
The Creative Rights in AI Coalition, the collective voice of over 50 organisations across the creative industries, of which the SoA is a member, has also responded to the plan.
In reaction, the Creative Rights in AI Coalition said:
Following the Prime Minister’s broad commitment to take forward the Plan’s recommendations, we call on the government to provide assurances that all options in the Copyright and AI Consultation – including enforcing the existing copyright regime with transparency provisions – remain on the table.
It is deeply concerning to see the EU approach looked to as a regime that the UK should mirror. The EU is still working out how to implement its EU AI Act and there are persistent questions over the workability of their opt-out regime. This serves as a real-time warning for the government about imitating regimes that have shown no signs of being effective. The UK should learn from the EU regime’s shortcomings, not blindly imitate it.
Furthermore, there is no ‘uncertainty’ in the UK text and data mining regime: it is clear that UK copyright law does not allow text and data mining for commercial purposes without a licence. The only uncertainty is around who has been using the UK’s creative crown jewels as training material without permission and how they got hold of it, making transparency provisions vital.
The Creative Rights in AI Coalition was launched in December 2024 to provide a collective voice on AI for organisations across the UK’s creative industries.
The coalition recently launched a letter writing campaign aimed at Members of Parliament. The campaign hopes to get MPs to pledge to safeguard creative rights in AI.