We need your views: Working with, not for, artificial intelligence

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SoA Policy Team

Promoting the interests of authors through public campaigns, political and industry lobbying, and working with partners.
Please complete our survey by 9 February to help inform our response to the government’s copyright and AI consultation

On 17 December 2024, the UK government launched a consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence (AI) to seek views on how it can ‘ensure the UK’s legal framework for AI and copyright supports the UK creative industries and AI sector together’.

This is a vital opportunity for SoA to influence government policy.

We need your experience and thoughts on the issues so we can evidence our response and generate maximum possible impact.

The government consultation is seeking views on how it can deliver on three key objectives for the AI sector and creative industries:

  1. Supporting rights holders’ control of their content and ability to be remunerated for its use.
  2. Supporting the development of world-leading AI models in the UK by ensuring wide and lawful access to high-quality data.
  3. Promoting greater trust and transparency between the sectors.

In short, it is seeking to ensure ‘control for rights holders’, ‘access for AI firms’ and ‘trust and transparency across parties’. While these goals are laudable, it is our view that the government’s preferred option does not balance these objectives appropriately. Instead, its favoured approach risks the livelihoods of creators in all professions – including authors, illustrators and translators – and exacerbates the ‘value transfer’ away from creative professionals to the AI and tech sectors.

One proposal is to create a new copyright exception that would allow organisations to use anything that is available on the internet, including copyright-protected works, to develop AI systems, even if those organisations are commercial enterprises. Currently, despite the UK’s copyright regime requiring consent and remuneration, there is a misunderstanding by many developers that if something is available online, they are entitled to use it without permission or remuneration.

The government is proposing that this use for machine learning would be permitted unless rightsholders actively ‘opt-out’ (referred to in the consultation documents as ‘rights reservation’). At present, there is no proposal for how a standardised opt out model could be implemented or managed.

The creative industries strongly oppose this exception to copyright. We advocate for maintaining robust copyright protections for creators and establishing a fair licensing market for creative works used in AI training.

The full government consultation document is here: Copyright and Artificial Intelligence – GOV.UK.

You can also read about the SoA’s view on government’s AI Action Plan and our other AI-related activities here: the SoA news room – Artificial Intelligence.

We will be responding to this important consultation, and we need your views so that we can support our submission with evidence and case studies. You do not need to be a member of the SoA to respond to this survey – we are keen to collect views from all authors, illustrators, translators and writers with an interest in UK copyright law reform.

The survey will close at midnight on Sunday 9 February.

All answers are collected anonymously and in accordance with the SoA privacy policy.

Many thanks for taking part. Your contribution is invaluable.

This survey has now closed, thank you so much for your views.

17 January 2025

The Society of Authors, the Creators’ Rights Alliance and the Creative Rights in Artificial Intelligence Coalition react to the Prime Minister’s plan to turn the UK into an ‘AI superpower’

31 December 2024

A round-up from the SoA on recent AI news
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Mercedes Lackey
2 February 2025 15:02

In the US we have already seen fake e-books generated by AI using an existing author’s name! Right now they are shite, but that could change overnight.

Nichola
29 January 2025 15:18

Whilst I agree with a lot of what has been written, I do think that in the majority of cases it will be virtually impossible to prove that it is one’s own work that has been mined. It’s akin to a design from a designer-maker, or a recipe – how little change does there have to be to be able to prove copyright theft?

Samuel
Samuel
28 January 2025 11:58

There should be no option to participate in generative AI. Authors who participate and who use generative AI should be blacklisted and their careers harmed. Gen AI is a violation of copyright, an invasion of an author’s property and the publishing community, and a disgusting violation of the creative act itself. It should be wholly excised from the process of writing and publishing. SOA’s position is weak and complicit. The government’s position will commit generational harms to the very act of writing and publishing. Copyright protection for AI generated work is a sick perversion of the spirit of copyright law.… Read more »

Joanna Waller
28 January 2025 10:22

As a translator, I am credited on a number of fairly obscure, academic publications. The authors of those I am sure would object strongly to their work being pirated by AI systems. In the translation community, we have noticed that the MT tools which some of our clients have adopted are delivering worse content even than when they were first introduced, because they are now feeding off their own output, so it seems to be a spiral to the bottom. This does not augur well for the future of AI-created material, let alone translation of safety-critical texts, medical or legal… Read more »

Suzanne Swan
Suzanne Swan
27 January 2025 16:38

What will happen when there are no creators and innovators? Where will AI get its ‘original content’ and human-generated ideas to copy and learn?

Cole Davis
27 January 2025 16:28

I write textbooks. AI has already caused my sales to collapse over this year.

John
27 January 2025 16:26

Completed the survey – but it’s still sending – now been 15 minutes and still sending. Will it ever end/send?

Stuart Farrimond
27 January 2025 16:01

As Dave has said, there’s a real danger here of black and white thinking and these AI tools are here to stay. Some of the suggestions like watermarks seem impractical both in implementation and enforcement, given how widespread AI generated content is online already.

David Salariya
27 January 2025 15:59

Proposals for changes to the UK’s 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (CDPA)  If no one knows who created something, does it still exist? If my work is erased, was I ever here?  Rewriting the 1988 (CDPA) for a Collaborative, AI-Powered Creative Industry A Collaborative Industry Needs Collaborative ProtectionsPublishing, like the film industry, is inherently collaborative. While writers and illustrators enjoy protections under the current copyright framework, the contributions of designers, editors, and concept creators goes unrecognised. A lack of formal acknowledgment has led to cases where the creator and designer of book concepts has been erased from their own… Read more »

Dave
Dave
27 January 2025 15:04

The survey assumes that AI is either bad or good (speaking rather generally). Why can’t it be both – many things are. Eg, being simpistid, the printing press was good for some but bad for those who wanted to restrict free speech.

Stephen/Steve Kerensky
Stephen/Steve Kerensky
21 January 2025 15:43

I`m very suspicious of relying on AI – artificial intelligence strikes me as being like artificial cream; leaves a nasty taste.

Jane Davis
Jane Davis
21 January 2025 15:18

Anybody else not sure if their submission has actually been sent? On Firefox, when you click “Submit” it hesitates then displays the same page, with all the answers still visible. Has it sent? No idea.

Libby Ashworth
Libby Ashworth
22 January 2025 11:13
Reply to  Jane Davis

I have a green box that thanks me for completing the survey, so I think yours hasn’t been sent. Maybe try again?

Last edited 21 days ago by Libby Ashworth
Felicity Martin
Felicity Martin
22 January 2025 16:26
Reply to  Jane Davis

I submitted on Safari and have the same green box as Libby.

Rachel Morris
21 January 2025 12:14

The question regarding your area of work should be multiple choice. I like many people do different kinds of writing AND am an artist and illustrator, and also edit a news platform and provide writer coaching. All are being impacted by AI as is my former bread-and-butter work of copyediting/proofreading.

Jane Anstey
21 January 2025 12:31
Reply to  Rachel Morris

Yes, I agree. I write both fiction and non-fiction

Louise Rogers Lalaurie
21 January 2025 15:58
Reply to  Rachel Morris

Yes, I ticked Translation but I also write specialist non-fiction.

Hephzibah Yohannan
21 January 2025 16:30
Reply to  Rachel Morris

Yes, always feeling I’m being squeezed into a box that doesn’t quite fit! That’s the nature of surveys, I suppose. I am author/illustrator/editor/indie publisher, of my own work and that of friends and most importantly, of my father whose estate I manage and publish.

Alex
Alex
23 January 2025 13:14
Reply to  Rachel Morris

Same! I’ve been an artist for over 20 years, but only just published my first book! So experienced artist, newbie writer.

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