Intellectual Property Rights Must Sit At Heart Of Global AI Discussion
Government can help create a healthy digital ecosystem which delivers value for consumers and civic society by giving its firm backing to enforcement of the UK’s “gold standard” copyright regime and boosting transparency around AI technology’s use of creative works.
At the News Media Association’s ‘How Can a Labour AI Bill Save Creativity and Spur Investment in Trusted Journalism?’ panel at the Labour Party Conference on Monday, speakers discussed the opportunities and challenges posed by AI to content creators.
News publishers generate revenue through advertising, subscriptions models, or licensing journalism to third parties, but the use of news content without licensing deals in place threatens the sustainability of news.
Panellist Matt Rogerson, Financial Times director of global public policy, said a recent study had found that 50 per cent of training data for Large Language Models was from news and periodicals.
He added: “Why do they do that? It’s because news is legalled, it’s subject to data protection law, it’s been published with care and attention, and so Large Language Model creators can use that with confidence that the data is correct.
“How do we ensure that value passes back to the market, and passes back to the people who are making that content? That is absolutely crucial. We’ve come a long way in the past five years in terms of improving competition policy and putting levers in place to ensure smaller companies can level the playing field with these companies.
“The AI Bill will be crucial in ensuring that work continues and embeds, and copyright law is clearly crucial to that as well.”
AI developers are choosing to ignore copyright rules because “the size of the prize is so big” in the race to get as much as data as they can, and develop the best LLM, The Fabian Society senior researcher Sasjkia Otto said.
Transparency in how content was being used by AI companies would increase consumer confidence in AI, alongside robust enforcement of the UK’s “gold standard” copyright regime which would enable the whole industry to “continue to thrive,” Sarah Lloyd, Pan Macmillan group communications director and global AI lead said.
She added: “We want a flourishing ecosystem where both AI tech companies and publishers can grow and innovate in harmony. We know that LLMs rely on this sustainable stream of the latest high-quality data and content which means IP needs to be at the centre of the global AI dialogue.”
Recognising that infringement had already taken place and taking retrospective action would also be an important step for government, she added.
In her opening remarks, panellist Lucy Rigby MP said it was really important for trusted journalism to be protected. “It’s one of the cornerstones of our democracy, people often say that and we can’t reiterate it enough,” she said.
“We are reminded of this on an almost daily basis when we see journalists imprisoned, journalists risking their lives, journalists losing their lives in some of the conflicts we’ve got around the world.”
Panel chair Sebastian Cuttill, NMA parliamentary and campaigns manager, said: “From our perspective at the NMA, we are very clear that the availability of trusted data on an ongoing sustainable basis to AI firms is also quite critical to the sustainability of AI development as well.”
He added: “I think it’s really worth reiterating that the creative industries are an over £100 billion industry, and I don’t think it would be sustainable for any government to sacrifice that existing benefit to the economy for prospective investment, potentially from AI firms.”