Without robust policy intervention, Generative AI will worsen many of the structural economic challenges that the British creative industries already face. The way forward is through purposeful, responsible, and informed regulation that protects our creative industries and encourages responsible AI uptake, write Ann Kristen Glenster, Lucy Hampton, Gina Neff and Thomas Lacy.
The unregulated use of Generative AI in the UK economy will not necessarily lead to economic growth, and risks damaging the UK’s thriving creative sector.
Particularly, unresolved questions concerning copyright and AI are creating uncertainty for the future of several creative professions, and risk harming the productivity of the creative sector as a whole. In a lose-lose situation, the same uncertainty is also acting as a barrier to the development and uptake of Generative AI in the UK.
Both the UK creative sector and UK AI sector are valuable for growth and productivity in the UK economy, and their future is interlinked. With this in mind, this report:
- examines the impacts Generative AI may have on the creative sector’s workforce and productivity;
- explores the current copyright landscape in the UK and US as it relates to AI;
- examines the challenges surrounding licencing agreements, performers rights, transparency provisions on AI systems, copyright in AI outputs, and false attribution;
- and considers the challenges posed by a Text Data Mining exemption.
Recommendations
- Government should holistically examine the impact that Generative AI is having on the workforce in the creative industries, including by commissioning research on AI adoption across the sector, and use it to inform robust policies for supporting the sector’s workforce.
- Government should encourage the uptake of licensing agreements to ensure that copyright holders are compensated for use of their work by AI systems, but it should also ensure that these licensing agreements fully acknowledge the rights of copyright holders and fairly compensate them for the use of their works.
- Government should independently ratify and adopt the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances as a first step in ensuring greater protections on performers rights and from false attribution by AI systems.
- Government should adopt transparency requirements on the training of AI system which include the mandatory disclosure of data provenance.
- Government should clarify that only a human author will be afforded copyright in the outputs generated by AI models and produce guidance on: the threshold for ‘creative intellectual effort’ in achieving copyright in AI outputs; the need for recognition and compensation to artists whose name and canon are used in prompts to AI models that generate outputs; and measures required to avoid false attribution in AI outputs.
- We urge caution against embarking on the path of a broad TDM exemption, regardless of an ‘opt-out’ mechanism, without a robust economic analysis of the impact that it will have on the creative industries.
This report is co-produced by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, and ai@cam
