Dominic Lees, associate professor at the University of Reading and specialist adviser to the Digital Culture Media and Sport (DCMS) Committee at a House of Commons inquiry into British film and high-end television, said: “The AI industry has got this original sin.
“They’ve already stolen from the creative industry.”
He said that when companies were training their AI models “they were sending bots out onto the internet to scrape anything they wanted, including copyrighted material, made by creative artists and using that to train their models”.
Lees said that it has led to artists “competing against their own AI-generated images”.
He added that the UK has a good copyright regime but “with AI, there’s no enforcement of that.
“Even when AI companies are breaching copyright, there’s no mechanism to force them to give compensation or to force them to retract,” he said.
A DCSM spokesperson said the government has engaged “extensively” with creatives and AI firms to ensure that they take the “right approach to this issue”.
They added: “Copyright laws must protect the UK’s position as a creative powerhouse while unlocking the extraordinary potential of AI-driven innovation to grow the economy and improve lives.”