In a debate in the House of Lords this week, Minister for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Intellectual Property (IP), Viscount Camrose, confirmed the Government’s position on copying works in order to extract data in relation to copyright law.

He said that “under existing law, copying works in order to extract data from them will infringe copyright, unless copying is permitted under a licence or exception”. However, he also added that “the legal question of exactly what is permitted under existing copyright exceptions is the subject of ongoing litigation”.

Several peers, including Chair of the Communications and Digital Committee, Baroness Stowell, reiterated publishers’ concerns about intellectual property during the debate. Viscount Colville of Culross also added that he is worried about the impact of AI on journalism, as “AI-generating companies can scrape for free the information from news websites, which are already facing increasing costs to create”.

Lord Ravensdale, a non-partisan peer who sponsored the debate, expressed support for the Government’s White Paper but stressed that “speed is the problem here” and that the Government needs “to start thinking immediately about the initial regulatory framework”. He recommended that the Government consider “as a minimum putting their five principles in the White Paper on a statutory footing in the near term to provide regulators with enhanced powers to address the risks of AI” and also suggested that an “AI Bill” could be brought forward to legislate for a new AI research organisation and provide regulators with the powers and resources to address the challenges of AI”.

Next steps: The PPA will continue to lobby the Government to bring forward transparency provisions so that copyright infringements of companies who own AI systems can be addressed. We will also be submitting written evidence to the Communications and Digital Committee’s call for evidence on large language models (LLMs). To hear more about our work in this area, please contact the PPA’s Policy & Public Affairs Manager Eilidh.wilson@ppa.co.uk.