Intellectual Property: Artificial Intelligence

Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate, because many of my Slough constituents have contacted me with concerns about the impact of AI on the intellectual property of creatives. We have a thriving UK creative industry, which contributed more than £120 billion to our economy in 2022. Just down the road from Slough, we have Pinewood studios and Shinfield studios, which have given us global hits over the years. Does my hon. Friend agree that those industries must be listened to properly before any legislative changes, to ensure that the film, book, media and other creative industries can continue to thrive?

[Mr Frith]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and demonstrates both the economic might of these industries—the sheer size of their contribution—and the fact that this is Britain’s best industry, giving some of the best life experiences. I know how well my hon. Friend is thought of.

Creative industries must not be expected to forfeit their legal rights for uncertainty. There is no doubt that AI will unlock huge gains in our society. The story some tell is selective, though. We are told that only if we deregulate will we unlock the AI economic growth, that the UK must hurry up or fall behind and that regulation will only slow us down, but the urgency to get the deal done is theirs. It is no coincidence that this hurrying up has intensified as the first US judgment has found that AI training is not deemed fair use.

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[Mr Frith]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; I will expand on her point about transparency.

We must have transparency, and it needs to be granular, enforceable and practical. AI developers must be required to disclose which copyrighted works they used to train or fine-tune their models. TollBit’s “State of the Bots” report confirms:

“Whilst every AI developer with a published policy claims its crawlers respect the robots exclusion protocol, TollBit data finds that in many instances bots continue scraping despite explicit disallow requests for those user agents in publishers’ robots.txt files”.

Many AI companies say that this need not hamper AI, and it is their voices that I wish to amplify today. This is about creating a fair, functioning market for training data that benefits all sectors. Last month’s YouGov survey of MPs and the general public agrees: 92% of MPs believe that AI companies should declare the data used to train their models, 85% say that using creative work without pay undermines intellectual property rights, and 79% support payments to creators whose work is used in training. The public expect us to do our best for our UK industries, and that is why we are square behind the Government’s instincts on British Steel. Let us apply the Government’s instinct here, too, as well as their strong record and rhetoric on digital images, deepfakes, online harms and the principle that if it is illegal offline, it is illegal online.

Big tech always begins on the fringes before being regulated to the centre. We saw that most recently with age verification on app stores. Will the Minister commit to table Government amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, in recognition of these supermassive concerns, to introduce a power to regulate for transparency, consent, copyright and compensation?

[Mr Dhesi]

My hon. Friend is making a very hard-hitting speech. Any reforms we introduce should ensure that artificial intelligence companies are more transparent about the materials they use to train their AI tools. Does my hon. Friend agree that that would benefit the development of AI while ensuring adequate protections for the creative industries and individuals’ intellectual property?

[Mr Frith]

It is absolutely imperative that we strike the right balance. This is not about pitting one side against the other; it is about coexistence and mutual interdependence.

Will the Minister consider introducing a stronger framework for personality rights under the data Bill, as proposed by Equity and the wider creative sector, to improve protections against the illegal exploitation of artistic works by generative AI companies? Will he also explain why the position is still to bundle transparency in with copyright?

The stories are increasingly familiar: entire creations and careers are copied and remixed into data, while the original human creator and rights owner is left out of the conversation entirely. One visitor I met from big tech likened the training of an AI on copyrighted work to the use of a library, but that argument dries up when we remember that libraries pay for their books, and it wilfully ignores the scalability differences between machine learning and human inspiration. If a warehouse traded in stolen guitars or paintings, we would expect action, but in digital form online, theft is somehow not just tolerated but to be expected. The logic that the creative industry feels it is being asked to swallow is that because tech saw it, read it or heard it, it can have it, own it and resell it.

Copyright is not an obstacle but infrastructure—a cornerstone of the British economy. As colleagues said, it makes possible the £1.24 billion contribution to UK plc. We should not be weakening it with vague exceptions or opt-out regimes. The Berne convention, signed by more than 180 countries, makes it clear that creators must not have to exert their rights for them to exist, and they should not have to sue to keep them. This violation of international copyright norms will undermine international relations and investment in our country. It will see capital take flight and cause economic damage.

I would like to introduce a new thought to the Minister: please consider the relationship with managed risk and the freedom of expression in a regulated model that creativity needs and relies on. Creatives take risks, and express themselves freely. For growth, we need an economy of risk takers with the freedom to express without fear that they will be ripped off. Without the legal frameworks that protect copyright, risk will not be embraced and creativity will dry up or move away. That is why there is so little faith in an opt-out model, or a strategic direction placing the burden on individual creators to prevent their work from being taken by tech. A technical solution does not yet exist to make such opt-outs meaningful. As they emerge, the same concerns and questions will need answering.

Worldwide, there is no comparable territory where this matter is settled. No functioning rights reservation has emerged in the EU, and in the US, further litigation is rife. California, the home of silicon valley, has a carve out—they do not get high on their own supply. The Chancellor and the leadership of our Government are right to propose on the world stage that the UK is a safe and certain bet for investment, but being the UK branch for US tech demands will not deliver that. New growth must ensure net growth. Industrial-scale unregulated scraping is not innovation; it is infringement. It erodes the commercial certainty that serious investors need.

In the regulation space, we have exciting growth opportunities in the emerging AI licensing sector. They demonstrate that copyright is well understood, and that there are scalable possibilities for licensing and ethical AI here in the UK. The emergence of platforms such as Created by Humans, Narrativ, ProRata, Getty Images, Musiio, Adobe and We Are Human, and relationships between Sony Music and Vermillio, Universal Music and SoundLabs, Lionsgate and Runway, and news publishers and Microsoft all point to new licensing with a duty of candour. With these examples, will the Minister confirm if the Government are considering building new foundational models led and built by UK AI firms?

In conclusion, this rapid technological change demands that we confront the decisions in front of us as a creative powerhouse. In this defining moment, we must stand with those whose creativity shapes our culture, economy and shared human story. Algorithms may calculate, but it is the human creativity behind it all that pours heart, history, hope and the human into and out of every note, frame and story. AI cannot be allowed to redefine the soul of creation. If we erode the rights that protect our creators, we risk not only economic loss but strangulation of those voices that tell our stories, reflect our struggles and inspire our futures. Let us affirm that in Britain we value not just innovation but the irreplaceable human spirit behind creativity, and protect the rights that mean that we thrive, for now and for generations yet to imagine, to dream and to create.