Comment by Chris Bryant

The consultation published yesterday sets out clearly that the Government’s objectives on this issue are threefold: to enhance rights holders’ control of their material and their ability to be paid for its use, to support wide access to high-quality material to drive the development of leading AI models in the UK, and to secure greater transparency from AI developers in order to build trust with creators, creative industries and consumers. In short, we want to provide legal certainty for all and to secure enhanced licensing of content. There are three key aspects to our consultation. The first is increased transparency from AI developers. The second aspect is a new system of rights reservation, whereby rights holders can withhold their content from being used unless and until it has been licensed. The third is an exception to copyright law for text and data mining where rights holders have licensed their content or otherwise chosen not to reserve their rights. That would improve access to content by AI developers, while allowing rights holders to control how their content is used for AI training.