We’ve got your back: our position on the UK government’s open consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence

Last month the UK government released an open consultation on copyright and artificial intelligence. The consultation presents a plan to update the UK law to remove uncertainty surrounding the use of copyrighted material in AI training. It aims to protect the creative industries while incentivising AI companies to move to the UK.

The key takeaways for artists and illustrators

• The UK government is proposing an exception to copyright law for training AI models, even for explicitly commercial purposes.
• This means AI companies are free to gather your data and train their models on it without needing permission or paying for it.
• The exception applies as the default, to prevent your work from being used you must actively opt-out.

In response to the consultation we thought it necessary to restate our manifesto.

The exactly.ai manifesto

We stand for a future where AI development and the creative industry grow together in harmony. Our vision is built on collaboration, fairness, and empowerment, ensuring that both creators and AI developers benefit from advancements in technology.

Our position is underpinned by three core beliefs:

1. Collaboration over competition: the current landscape often pits AI development against creative industries. We reject this "either-or" approach. A balanced, win-win solution is possible, where AI and creators thrive together.
2. Empowering creators: exactly.ai enables creators who lack coding skills to harness the power of AI. By using our platform, creators can train AI models using their own artwork and monetise those models directly. Ownership of these AI models always remains with the creators, not us. This principle is fundamental and should be enforced universally.
3. Creators as technology owners: for the creative industry to benefit from AI, creators must not only supply data but also own and control the resulting technology. This shifts creators from being mere contributors to becoming stakeholders in AI advancements.

Our proposals:

Creators must feel confident sharing their work online: visibility is essential for artists’ careers to create opportunities to be discovered.

• It must be simple for creators to use machine-readable tags to specify whether their images can or cannot be used for AI training.
• Governments must enforce laws to ensure AI companies do not use creators' work for training without explicit permission.

Artists must have ways to benefit from AI: the developments in AI are creating opportunities for businesses to scale their imagery, artists must also benefit from this.

• Support should be provided to help creators leverage AI, including the ability to train personalised style models without requiring coding expertise.
• Fine-tuned AI style models should belong to the creators whose work they are based on.

Developers of AI should have access to data on the internet to train their models, but:

• Governments should mandate transparency in AI model training and ensure foundational models respect the rights of creators whose data they use.
• Breaches of these regulations must result in clear, enforceable penalties to deter misuse and build trust between AI developers and creators.

We believe that artists’ copyright must be respected and that it must be safe for creators to publish their work on the internet.

Artists featured in this post:

Cover image: fright fall by Marcos Abdallah

Triptych: misty curves by Gant