In this article Taylor Hampton Solicitors examines the growing interest and concerns with copyright and artificial intelligence. On 13 January 2025, the UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced an Action Plan to help the UK become an “AI superpower”. On 18 March 2026, the UK Government published its report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence following a public consultation. In this report, the Government considered the inherent tension between protecting copyright, particularly for those in the creative industries, and the development of AI systems, which may require access to material (often copyrighted) to train the AI model. Although the report is detailed in content, the conclusion is broadly one of maintaining the status quo, to allow further time to gather evidence and consider the best way forward for all those impacted.
Background
The ONS’s Business Insights and impact on the UK economy showed that in December 2025, 25% of UK firms had adopted some form of AI, up 15% from September 2023. The growth of AI presents risks, especially to the creative sectors, as the AI models typically exploit (potentially copyrighted) material as training data. This is typically carried out without sufficient consent or renumeration to the original authors or owners of the work. This conflict makes promoting AI whilst protecting original works a difficult balancing act for the Government. The consultation received over 11,000 responses from a range of industries, including academics, legal professionals, businesses and representative groups, reflecting the strength of cross-sector feeling. The report considered a number of different proposals and policy options moving forward.
Creatives v. Developers
The divide between creatives and AI developers could not be starker. According to the Independent Society of Musicians 2026 report, 99% of creators believe their work has been scraped (i.e. used in an AI model dataset) without consent. On the other hand, OpenAI stated that it would be “impossible to train today’s leading AI models without using copyrighted materials”. AI models train on access to billions, if not trillions, of datapoints. It appears the current licensing market is considered insufficient by both sides, but for entirely opposite reasons.
Current Copyright Law
The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (‘CDPA’) sets out the relevant framework for copyright protection. Copyright does not need to be registered; it either exists or it does not exist. This means that claimant in an action for copyright infringement will, in the first instance, need to prove that the copyright: (1) exists; and (2) belongs to them. Generally, copyrighted material can only be used with consent from its owner, for example by a form of licence or assignment. There is, in theory, an exception to this under s. 29A CDPA which permits the copying of information without infringement where it is used “for the sole purpose of research for a non-commercial purpose”. This is also known as the ‘text and data mining exception’. It is unlikely that such an exception will apply for commercial entities, for example Open AI or Anthropic.
Findings and Conclusion
The report found that AI developers tended to favour the introduction of a much broader text and data mining exception, which allows for data mining on copyrighted works for any purpose, with no opt out mechanism. On the other hand, creatives tended to favour strengthening existing copyright principles so that licencing is required for using copies of works during AI development. The Government, faced with this impasse, has chosen not to intervene directly in the licensing market. It considers that (at this stage) proposals to review current transparency rules in relation to what training material is used by AI models, which would allow the owner of a copyrighted work to assert their rights more effectively, may be sufficient alongside current market-led licencing.
It is clear that the status quo satisfies neither side. With both sectors too economically significant to leave in a state of legal uncertainty indefinitely, the Government may need to move beyond observation if it is serious about the country’s AI ambitions.
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