Intellectual Property: Artificial Intelligence
Samantha Niblett Excerpts(6 days, 9 hours ago)
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Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Frith) for securing this crucial debate—a great way to spend his birthday.
I want to draw attention to the fact that my partner works in publishing. My background is not in publishing or the creative industries, but in the data and tech industry, and I am excited by what it can help us to achieve. I rise to speak not only about artificial intelligence, but about the kind of country we want to be in the decades ahead. We are at a crossroads. The United Kingdom is positioning itself as a global leader in AI, and rightly so—AI has the potential to transform every sector of our economy, from healthcare to transport and from education to climate science—but, as we drive innovation forward, we must also ensure that our values are aligned.
If we want to be the best place in the world to start, scale and grow an AI company, we must also be the most trusted. Trust is not built through ambition alone; it is built through transparency, fairness, respect for the rule of law and the protection of intellectual property. At present, many of the most powerful AI models have been trained on vast quantities of copyrighted material—books, articles, art, music and software—and often without the consent, knowledge or compensation of the people who created it. That is not hypothetical; it is happening now. In the last week, we have seen some big names in tech say that they want IP law to be ripped up altogether. I wonder how they would feel if tech firms with deeper pockets and bigger legal teams than theirs decided to simply take what they have. Pulling up the ladder of IP law may no longer seem such an attractive prospect.
Let us be absolutely clear: copyright is not an inconvenience or a technicality. It is the legal and moral framework that ensures that creators are rewarded for their contributions. Some people will argue that requiring AI companies to comply with copyright law would hinder innovation, but the opposite is true: legal certainty enables innovation. What stifles innovation is a regulatory vacuum where only the largest, best resourced firms can afford to operate in the grey areas of the law. We should not accept a model where creativity becomes collateral damage in the pursuit of speed or short-term profit for shareholders. Governments must prioritise the concerns of citizens.
Let us establish a clear, transparent and enforceable framework for the use of copyrighted content in AI training, and let us not waste any time or kick this can down the road by waiting for the results of the copyright and AI consultation. Let us act now. Let us amend the Data (Use and Access) Bill to ensure that companies providing generative AI services in the UK must comply with UK copyright law and be transparent about the data fuelling their models. After all, they should know what data they are utilising. It can be done; companies including Adobe, 273 Ventures and Flawless AI are doing it. Experts have made it clear that no opt-out models work. We have an opportunity to be world leaders—let us lead.
Copyright and Artificial Intelligence
Samantha Niblett Excerpts(4 months, 1 week ago)
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Chris Bryant
Well, no. This is a genuinely thorny question that needs a technical solution. The Government are not going to write the technical solution. That has to come from the two sides working out together how we can get to a situation that benefits everybody. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right about the newspapers. Some newspapers have already licensed material, including Associated Newspapers, The Washington Post and several others. It would be interesting to see whether the income that those companies are receiving is flowing through to the journalists who produce the copyright material in the first place, but perhaps that is part of the rights reservation system that we need to look at as well.
Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
The commitment of the Secretaries of State for Culture, Media and Sport and for Science, Innovation and Technology to ensuring that creators can control how their content is used and be paid for it is very welcome, but some creators are concerned that the rights reservation framework proposed by the Government will not allow them to assert control. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that a new framework takes account of those concerns?
Chris Bryant
I have been trying—perhaps I have not yet succeeded—to make it absolutely clear that I, the Secretaries of State for Culture, Media and Sport and for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Feryal Clark), who is sitting next to me, would not bring forward for legislation something that undermined the copyright rights of rights holders in the creative industries. We simply would not do so.
What we are trying to do is push both sides to a place where we can create a new system—it will probably be new to the United Kingdom, and might be one of our gifts to the world—of rights reservation that is simple, practical and practicable. This is not a Second Reading debate; it is simply a statement on a consultation. I urge all who have concerns to voice them in that consultation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Samantha Niblett Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology (Feryal Clark)
I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for all the work that she does to encourage more women into tech. It is great to know that the tech world is full not just of “tech bros”, but quite a lot of tech sisters as well. We are committed to building on the UK’s success as a global AI leader, and the upcoming AI action plan demonstrates that commitment to ensure the safe development of AI models by introducing binding regulation on a handful of companies developing the most powerful AI systems, fostering trust in those technologies. We will also continue—