Creative Industries: Rights Reservation Model

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Black. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foster, on securing this timely and excellent debate. In doing so, I declare my interests as set out in the register—in particular my technology interests, not least as an adviser to Socially Recruited, which is an AI business.

As the noble Lord, Lord Foster, has already set out, we had an excellent debate on Tuesday night. My question for this afternoon is: how much does it cost to develop and train a foundation model? Is it £500 billion or £5 million? Is it somewhere in between? I do not know, but here is what we do know. The cost of current foundational models is felt by our creatives: the musicians who make sounds where there would otherwise be silence; and the writers who fill a blank page with words that touch our human hearts and souls and, sometimes, change the course of human history. They are paying the cost of the current “model” that we have.

How can it be not only that they are currently footing the cost but that the potential, proposed approach to this issue will put the onus on them to assert their rights? There is that onus, the cost, pressure and stress and, ultimately, the impossibility of doing this with an opt-out model. My first question to the Minister is: can it ever be so that opting out could work? How could it ever bring the certainty, clarity and consistency that we require? As a helpful example, can the Minister say something about the recent LAION case and the light that that throws on this matter?

There is a real tedium to this TDM discussion. It is just that an obvious and irrefutable truth is wilfully ignored and pushed to one side. If you own a copyright or have IP rights, you hold and own those rights. If you do not, the truth is simple and unquestionable: those rights are not yours. That should be the guiding principle when considering any potential approach to IP and copyright in relation not just to AI but to the fact that we have hundreds of years of legal certainty which comes from this.

How would the Minister define a proper and workable model for the preservation of these rights? What would he say to individuals and small entities about the cost, pressure and impossibility of seeking to enforce their rights? How does he intend transparency to be an important thread that runs through this alongside the technical? What about post-ingestion and, if we get to the point of some potential change, what about all that protected material already ingested deep into the engine room of these models?

What attracts businesses, investors and innovators to the UK from a regulatory and legislative perspective? It is certainty, clarity and consistency. In no sense can we say that we have those right now in our country. That is why I believe, not only when it comes to IP and copyright, that given all the issues we are currently grappling with in these new technologies, not least AI, we should have overarching AI legislation and right-sized regulation, which is always good for all elements of our economy and society. Yes, look at IP and copyright, but we should have an AI authority with AI-responsible officers labelling sandboxes and, crucially, a complete transformation of public engagement.

It seems clear at this stage that when it comes to the Government’s plans for IP and copyright in relation to AI, we should all have serious reservations. I go back to that fundamental truth that there is no question, debate, difficulty or complexity. You either have the rights set out at law or you do not. That should inform all discussions and points around IP and copyright. We should have an approach that goes to the heart of this fundamental truth: it is our data. We decide, determine and choose and then, for citizens, consumers and creatives, we have a real opportunity to say positively, with a hashtag, “#OurAIFutures”.