Writing to the Government, Dinenage warned that any “blanket copyright exemption” for AI text and data mining would be “disastrous”, because it would enable AI developers to “scrape creative works from the internet to train their systems without permission and without paying the human creators whose work AI seeks to emulate and compete with”.

She asserted that “the only thing the Government needs to do in this area is oblige tech companies to be transparent about the creative work they are using to train their systems so that the two ‘sides’ (creative and tech) can get around the table and discuss commercial models”.

The PPA public affairs team has been engaging with Caroline Dinenage’s team, as well as the newly elected Committee members to raise awareness about how specialist publishers are impacted by the lack of transparency requirements for AI developers.

Speaking about this issue in parliament this week, Minister for AI, Feryal Clark reiterated that “no decision has been made on whether to legislate on copyright in relation to text and data mining” and that the Government “must take the time to hear stakeholder views and give them careful consideration”.

In addition to our engagement with MPs, the PPA public affairs team are in discussions with Government officials about next steps. For more information about this, please contact Eilidh.wilson@ppa.co.uk 

You can read Dinenage’s full letter here.