AI – Tony Blair Institute ‘Rebooting Copyright’ report
The ‘Rebooting Copyright’ report was published in April, and has been roundly denounced by the creative sector. AOI join many other organisations in calling out the report’s approach to copyright and the effect handing over the rights in work posted online for training generative AI would have on the creative sector.
The report follows on from the recent Government consultation on AI and Copyright which proposes an exception to copyright that would allow commercial use of the ‘scraping’ of your work from the internet to train generative AI by AI developers – for no payment and the possibility of an opt out (‘rights reservation’) for creators. An opt out is widely considered to be unworkable by creators.
The report echoes familiar arguments from AI developers, especially claiming that there is a ‘lack of clarity’ for tech companies regarding copyright laws and content scraping. This position is misleading – the law is very clear: creative works should not be copied without permission from their creators.
The document attempts to frame copyright laws as outdated, suggesting they were ‘designed for an earlier era’. This argument ignores the flexibility of the UK’s copyright framework, which can be effectively applied to all current requirements. The report makes several concerning and unsubstantiated claims that copyright isn’t working, even saying, ‘there are better ways to help creators flourish in the digital age than strict copyright laws’, and ‘old notions of ownership will not serve rights holders as well as they have for the past 300 years’.
One of the report’s most problematic arguments suggests that any work available online should be freely available for AI training purposes. This ignores the fundamental reality that creators share their work online to promote their services, not to provide free training data for AI systems. The report attempts to justify many aspects of scraping with no remuneration and even implies that taxpayers are losing out due to the ‘current copyright policy’, without providing substantial evidence for this assertion.
A notable new proposal in the report is the suggestion of establishing a Centre for AI and Creative Industries. Supposedly the centre would be led by ‘international experts in creative AI’ and ‘directly address current and future challenges facing the sector’. There is no mention of including any voices from the creative sector in this initiative, and the proposed funding model for the Centre would be taxing ‘data connections on fixed lines and mobile devices’ – an additional cost that would be passed on to the public.
The report aims to diminish creators rights to the benefit of big tech companies, ignoring clear evidence that AI progress can be made through legal licensing agreements with willing creators. Government have confirmed that they have met with the Tony Blair Institute, which raises concerns about whose interests are being prioritised in policy discussions. The Association of Illustrators believe that any new system for scraping creative works should be an opt-in, not opt-out, respecting creators’ fundamental right to choose whether their work is used for AI training, inference, or fine-tuning. All creators deserve this basic protection of their intellectual property rights.
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