Eleventh Report - Connected tech: AI and creative technology

We welcome the Government’s sensible proposals for regulating AI, including taking a sectoral approach underpinned by six cross-sector principles. However, there are outstanding weaknesses with this approach that the Government should clarify, including ensuring that sector regulators who do not currently regulate in the tech sector will build up technical expertise and are working in a joined-up manner.

The Government should set out a plan to provide upskilling and resourcing for non- digital sector regulators to ensure they can meet the needs of the new cross-sector regulatory regime for AI.

The Government has announced that it intends to take on a central support role to buttress the regime for AI regulation and provide cross-sector cohesion. The Government should establish a discrete AI regulation co-ordination unit within Whitehall to ensure coherent working and enable robust stakeholder engagement. This unit should publish regular reports to enable Parliament to fully consider the progress of the regime’s introduction and implementation.

We are pleased that the Government has been listening to stakeholders on text and data mining intellectual property for commercial benefit and we are encouraged that Ministers are looking again at this. The current framework, which provides an exemption for text and data mining for non-commercial research purposes and otherwise allows creators to licence their work for any further purpose, provides an appropriate balance between innovation and creator rights.

We recommend that the Government does not pursue plans for a broad text and data mining exemption to copyright. Instead, the Government should proactively support small AI developers in particular, who may find difficulties in acquiring licences, by reviewing how licensing schemes can be introduced for technical material and how mutually-beneficial arrangements can be struck with rights management organisations and creative industries trade bodies. The Government should support the continuance of a strong copyright regime in the UK and be clear that licences are required to use copyrighted content in AI. In line with our previous work, this Committee also believes that the Government should act to ensure that creators are well rewarded in the copyright regime.

The Government must work to regain the trust of the creative industries following its abortive attempt to introduce a broad text and data mining exemption. The Government should consider how creatives can ensure transparency and, if necessary, recourse and redress if they suspect that AI developers are wrongfully using their works in AI development.

The Government’s initial handing of the text and data mining exemption to copyright for AI development, though eventually correct, shows a clear lack of understanding of the needs of the UK’s creative industries. All branches of Government need to better understand the impact of AI, and technology more broadly, on the creative Connected tech: AI and creative technology 35 industries and be able to defend their interests consistently. We will continue to look on the Government’s progress with interest. The Government should provide a substantive update on its direction in managing the impact of AI on the creative industries and any discussions on these matters by the end of 2023. (Paragraph 33) Creative technology

While institutions are understandably investing in products such as the metaverse and generative AI, this should not be to the exclusion of novel and emerging technologies, which are enabling artists to innovate and attract audiences. In order to encourage a rich and diverse cultural and creative technology ecosystem, the Government and its arm’s-length bodies should ensure support for the creative industries encourages artists to push the boundaries of creativity and technology and is not limited to following the narrow interests of the tech sector. Cultural institutions should be encouraged and supported by the Government to invest in, present and preserve the results of creative technology.

As we have repeatedly raised, the tech sector and creative industries are experiencing long-standing skills and personnel shortages that have capped the potential for growth. The Government’s forthcoming Cultural Education Plan should explicitly discuss how educators can combine digital skills provision with creative and cultural education to nurture the next generation of digital artists, visual effects professionals and innovators in creative technology to address long-running skills shortages in the sector.

The Government’s Cultural Education Plan Expert Advisory Panel has only recently been appointed, almost a year after the appointment of its chair and well over six months after Government said it would appoint its members. We have serious misgivings about the Government’s insistence that it will publish the Plan in 2023 as promised, which we believe will now either be rushed or late. Neither of these outcomes will serve the needs and interests of our creative industries. The Government must urgently clarify the scope and timescale for the Cultural Education Plan, to ensure it will deliver on its aims for the creative industries.

The rapid growth of generative artificial intelligence and the impact this is already having on the ability of artists to protect their moral rights means that urgent action is necessary. The Government should improve protections for creatives to prevent misuse of their likeness and performances by emerging technologies such as generative AI. At minimum, this should involve bringing forward ratification of the Beijing Treaty on Audiovisual Performances by the time it responds to this report. (Paragraph 61) 36 Connected tech: AI and creative technology