UK signals AI copyright reset, backs pay for creators
LONDON, ENGLAND — The United Kingdom government is shifting its approach to AI and copyright, with Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Liz Kendall announcing a “reset” of the debate.
In a move sympathetic to artists, Kendall affirmed that “people rightly want to get paid for the work that they do,” pivoting away from earlier proposals that placed the burden on creators to opt out of AI firms using their work.
Artist compensation policy shift
Kendall’s stance represents a substantive pivot from the policy direction of her predecessor, Peter Kyle. Where Kyle had previously advocated for an opt-out system that placed the burden on artists to protect their work, Kendall has explicitly recognized the fundamental demand for payment.
This rethink, which she is pursuing with Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, comprises face-to-face communication with both the creative and AI communities to outline a middle ground acceptable to all. The tone shift is a direct reaction to the furious outcry of a coalition of famous British artists.
This cultural rejection has been articulated and widespread, underscoring the high stakes of the government’s consultation on a new AI intellectual property landscape.
Major artists such as Paul McCartney, Kate Bush, Sam Fender, the Pet Shop Boys, Hans Zimmer, and Elton John have already spoken out against the previous suggestions, with McCartney releasing a protest track without lyrics and John accusing the government of being “absolute losers.”
Kendall’s intervention fails to defuse the tension in this conflict and restore confidence in a creative industry that perceives AI companies as stealing its copyrighted content without even obtaining permission to use it as training data.
Transparency and trust hurdles for AI firms
While the policy reset focuses on the payment principle, a critical implementation hurdle remains the need for transparency from AI companies. Kendall has acknowledged that many in the creative sector demand clarity on whether their work has already been used to train AI systems, a necessary precursor to any compensation model.
A recent precedent is a $1.5 billion legal settlement by AI company Anthropic, which led to the creation of a searchable database of 500,000 books used to train its models, allowing authors to identify their work and claim payment. This model demonstrates a practical, though complex, pathway toward remunerating creators.
But the question of regaining the creative community’s trust in the government process is another matter. Crossbench peer Beeban Kidron said that the government “lost the trust of the entire creative community and the public, who overwhelmingly support the creative industry’s need to receive a fair day’s pay for their work.”
Kidron has urged that action is needed now, including stopping public-sector contracts with AI companies that bring copyright cases and getting the companies to pledge to respect copyright.
Kendall, in his turn, has to negotiate between this urgency to act and the actual task of developing a policy, stating that, “We’ve got to get this right. There’s a lot of detail to work out here, but I believe it is possible to find a way forward that delivers for both because we don’t want to have to choose.”
The UK’s move to mandate compensation, rather than impose an opt-out burden, sets a crucial legal and economic precedent for valuing human labor in the nascent AI-driven economy.
