The government’s AI Action Plan must not undermine the UK’s world-leading journalism industry and wider creative sector, the Director of the Society of Editors has warned.
The Society’s comments came as the Prime Minister today announced the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan which outlines its ambitious vision for transformative growth in the tech sector.
Backed by £14 billion with the promise of more than 13,000 jobs, the government pledged to throw ‘the full weight of Whitehall’ behind the AI industry with the creation of new AI Growth Zones to speed up planning proposals and build more AI infrastructure as well as boost the adoption of AI across public and private sectors.
The government also agreed to take forward all 50 recommendations set out by Matt Clifford in his AI Opportunities Action Plan which includes a pledge to ‘reform the UK text and data mining regime’ on the basis that ‘current uncertainty around intellectual property (IP) is hindering innovation and undermining broader ambitions for AI’. The Society, as part of the Creative Rights in AI Coalition, has previously called on the government to enforce existing copyright law in the face of generative AI firms using copyrighted content, without permission, to operationalise AI tools.
Responding to the proposals, Dawn Alford, Executive Director of the Society of Editors said: “Today’s AI Action Plan has the power to drive long-term growth in the tech sector and ensure the UK is a world leader when it comes to AI technology. While we support efforts to drive growth, the government must also look to support the creative industries which continue to be exploited by the unauthorised scraping of their content by generative AI tools.
“In order to drive growth and innovation in both the creative and tech sectors the government must enforce copyright, support a dynamic licensing market and prioritise control and transparency for content creators.
“Our creative industries need a government that is on their side – helping to build a world-leading AI industry that collaborates with, not undermines, the creative and news sectors.”
