UK, AI and copyright law

Arts Law is tracking developments about generative AI around the world, noting those most recently coming from the United Kingdom (UK).

The Labour government has just unveiled its plan, including a recommendation to change the UK’s copyright regime. It proposes to further bolster the UK’s exception for text and data-mining (scraping content to feed the gen-AI systems), so that it’s  “at least as competitive” as the European Union’s (EU’s).

The effect would be the legal entitlement of AI systems to use unrestrained, without the permission or provision of compensation for artists, their material, so long as they have the ability to “opt out” (i.e. of what is being described in much reporting as trawling online).

Australia doesn’t have provision for text and data-mining and nor do our existing fair dealing exceptions operate like the United States’ more open and flexible approach of ‘fair use’, so, artists here may feel that our current legal protections provide a superior legal climate for protection of creative work than in other jurisdictions.