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The UK government will consider proposals for a new “right to personality”, a move designed to prevent AI companies from creating products that mimic the key features of well-known artists and celebrities.
On Tuesday ministers will launch a consultation into updating copyright rules that will govern how tech companies can scrape the content that teaches their artificial intelligence models. The Labour administration is expected to bring forward legislation on the issue within the next two years.
The consultation will examine establishing new protections for artists and creators, according to people familiar with the government’s plans. These would aim to block the creation of AI products that very closely resemble the voice, image or other distinguishing features of famous individuals and groups.
A core element of the consultation will involve plans for a new rights reservation mechanism to provide legal certainty to both the creative industries and AI sector, the people said.
The mechanism would aim to enable more licensing of content for those happy for their material to be scraped if they are paid for it, while offering protection to anyone who opposes it being used to train AI models.
Ministers will seek views on the best technical solution for such a mechanism, so that it does not inadvertently punish rights holders who do not wish for their material to be scraped by then reducing its visibility on the internet.
Bolstering transparency around AI companies’ use of scraped material is another objective of the government’s consultation, the people said.
Industry executives have raised objections to any scheme that would allow AI companies to mine the internet freely to train algorithms on content from publishers and artists unless they specifically “opt in” to any arrangement.
The government consultation is expected to avoid the use of phrases “opt in” or “opt out” to describe the rights reservation scheme it hopes to create.
The consultation is set to prove hugely controversial given executives across the creative industries — from publishing and music to film and photography — are already alarmed that tech companies have been able to “rip off” their work to train AI models.
Any sign that the government is siding with AI companies in a bid to pursue growth in the tech sector at the expense of the UK’s £125bn creative sector will cause widespread upset.
The consultation will be designed to be as open-ended as possible, according to those familiar with the matter, to encourage debate on the issues.
However, creative industry executives are already concerned about the concept of “rights reservation” — fearing the phrase will simply replace the idea of making companies and artists “opt out” of their content being stolen.
They warn that copyright holders may not even know who is scraping their content so the bid to reserve rights in the first place would become impossible.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
