OpenAI and Google have rejected the government’s preferred approach to solve the dispute about artificial intelligence and copyright.
In February almost every UK daily newspaper gave over its front page and website to a campaign to stop tech giants from exploiting the creative industries.
The government’s plan, which has prompted protests from leading figures in the arts, is to amend copyright law to allowdevelopers to train their AI models on publicly available content for commercial use without consent from rights holders, unless they opt out.
However, OpenAI has called for a broader copyright exemption for AI, rejecting the opt-out model.
Meanwhile, Google has said that opting out should not automatically guarantee compensation for rights holders and insisted that AI training must occur on an open web.
The submissions were made in response to a request from the Commons science, innovation and technology committee after both companies had declined to provide evidence to MPs on their positions. Ministers are expected to commit themselves to publishing reviews of technical solutions as part of an effort to address criticism of the proposals, according to Politico. The government’s proposal also includes enhanced transparency requirements for AI firms. • Hollywood stars urge Trump to make AI pay for using their work In its response to the consultation, OpenAI said that experience from other regions, including the EU, demonstrated that opt-out models encounter “significant implementation challenges.” The company also warned that transparency requirements could lead developers to “deprioritise the market.” Calling for a broad copyright exemption, the company said: “The UK has a rare opportunity to cement itself as the AI capital of Europe by making choices that avoid policy uncertainty, foster innovation and drive economic growth.” • Don’t let AI steal our copyright, giants of the arts tell Labour Google said that rights holders already had the ability to exercise “choice and control” by blocking web crawlers from scraping their content. However, the company said that those who opted out of AI training should not automatically be entitled to compensation if their content still appeared in a model’s training data. “We believe training on the open web must be free,” it said, before warning that “excessive transparency requirements … could hinder AI development and impact the UK’s competitiveness in this space.” Sundar Pichai, the boss of Google JAKUB PORZYCKI/NURPHOTO/GETTY IMAGES Nicholas Caddick, an intellectual property expert, said the proposals could conflict with Britain’s obligations under an international treaty. Caddick has delivered a legal opinion on the issue for the Publishers Association which has been sent to Lord Hermer, the attorney-general. Meanwhile, a large majority of MPs want artificial intelligence companies to be more transparent about copyrighted works they have used and to pay creatives for them, a poll suggests. The poll, commissioned by the Publishers Association, suggested there is cross-party support for protections that would help Britain’s creative industry. In February peers voted for amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill which they believe would have better protected the creative industries. However, these were removed by Labour when the bill passed to the Commons.