Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to help tackle the impact of artificial intelligence on the (a) sustainability and (b) accuracy of news media.

Journalism plays an invaluable role in the fabric of our society and we are committed to supporting a free, sustainable and plural news media landscape. In this context, we recognise concerns from the press sector that recent developments in generative AI pose risks, as well as opportunities, to journalism.

We are engaging with the press sector on these concerns. Both I and the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology have each held roundtables earlier this year with publishers and broadcasters to discuss AI and journalism. DCMS has also provided funding to the Bridging Responsible AI Divides research programme at The University of Edinburgh, which produced the report ‘Generative AI and Journalism: Mapping the Risk Landscape’.

We recognise that particular concerns have been raised with regard to the use of copyrighted news content in the training of AI models and how this interacts with UK copyright law. We want to support rightsholders in licensing their work in the digital age while allowing AI developers to benefit from access to creative material in the UK, including that from independent media. The government is analysing responses to the consultation and looking at all options. We will set out a detailed economic impact assessment on all options and a report on the use of copyright material for AI training, transparency and technical standards. This analysis will inform our position, alongside a series of expert working groups launching this week, bringing together people from both the AI and creative sectors.