‘Good news’ as copyright and AI stand-off to end within months

The ongoing stand-off over the use of copyright protected materials in training AI systems will be resolved by the end of the year, according to the UK’s parliamentary under-secretary of state for science, innovation and technology, Feryal Clark. Speaking recently at the Times Tech Summit, Clark stressed that a resolution is expected in the coming months, whether that be through legislation or policy amendment.

The quality of output produced by generative AI systems is largely dependent on the quality of data used for training them. AI firms have long been seeking access to large quantities of high quality datasets to use in the development process. However, creative industry representatives continue to raise concerns over the use of their content in AI training, arguing that use without their consent and in return for payment of a royalty is copyright infringement.

Gill Dennis, creative rights protection expert at Pinsent Masons, said: “The current uncertainty will have already had a negative impact on both content creator income progress in AI innovation and so the sooner a solution is found the better. However, the expectation that the issue will be resolved ‘by the end of the year’ seems ambitious given that there have already been many months of stakeholder negotiations which have ended in no voluntary agreement.”

The speech follows calls for clarity from industry and law makers, including from Baroness Stowell of Beeston, who chairs the Communications and Digital Committee in the House of Lords, earlier this year. Baroness Stowell penned a letter to the then secretary of state for science, innovation and technology describing the government’s record on copyright as “inadequate and deteriorating” urging a review of copyright law around the development of AI amid the risk that “problematic business models” become “entrenched and normalised”.

“Feryal Clark’s comments suggest that the deadlock on the dispute may be broken by the imposition of a legislative, rather than a voluntary industry, solution. If that is the case, it will be interesting to see whether one side of the debate will be favoured over another or if there be attempt to strike a balance, as the previous government said that it would do, between the interests of all parties concerned,” said Dennis.

Some content creators have brought legal action against AI developers amid the current stand-off. A dispute between Getty Images and Stability AI is currently pending trial before the High Court in London. Getty Images claimed that Stability AI, in developing and training AI system ‘Stable Diffusion’, is responsible for infringing its intellectual property rights in two ways. First, by using its images as data inputs for the purposes of training and developing Stable Diffusion and second, in respect of the outputs generated by Stable Diffusion, which Getty claims are synthetic images reproducing copyright works.

However, with hearings in that case not anticipated until next summer, and a judgment of the High Court unlikely until into 2026 – and the further possibility of appeals to follow – there is “growing pressure on the new government to provide some direction before the courts do so”, said Dennis.

“There was a sense that the previous UK government’s talk of legislating to achieve an appropriate balance between the interests of content creators and AI developers was an empty threat, given the pending litigation between Getty Images and Stability AI which offers the potential for the courts to provide some much-needed case law in this area in the UK,” Dennis added.