A progress report it published last month<\/a>\u00a0shed little light on what proposals it might bring forward, but the comments Kendall, Nandy and other government officials made to the Committee offer some clues as to the government’s latest thinking.<\/p>\nOpt out option challenges<\/p>\n
Regarding the proposal for an opt out, Kendall acknowledged that the government\u2019s initial proposals were \u201cnot a terribly popular preferred option\u201d. She said the government had \u201cheard loud and clear\u201d why it \u201chas been rejected\u201d.<\/p>\n
Difficulties in implementing any opt out mechanism have been surfaced through the working groups, according to Oliver Ilott, interim director general for AI at the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. He said policymakers in the EU, India and Australia are also currently considering how to overcome challenges associated with operating an opt out approach \u2013 and implied that the UK government would only make provision for an opt out mechanism in UK law if it also decided to go ahead with expanding the text and data mining exception.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UK doesn\u2019t currently have an opt out approach because we don\u2019t have a broad exemption,\u201d Ilott said. \u201cOpt outs are relevant where countries have gone down the route of creating an exemption and the opt out plays into that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to the implementation of those, we\u2019ve heard lots of views \u2013 one view we\u2019ve heard expressed is that the opt out system places a regulatory burden on the rightsholder, because they have to exercise that opt out and if you are a smaller operator \u2026 that puts some burden on you to go through and make sure that [opt out] is expressed properly and this might be technical; you would need some sort of interface there to help you do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other things we\u2019ve heard is that if the opt out process becomes extremely straightforward then everyone just withdraws their material from the market. If you went down the route of creating an exemption it would be because you wanted people to access the material for training and if everyone withdraws you\u2019ve undermined the primary policy goal you\u2019ve set out there,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe other thing we have to bear in mind is \u2026 there are technical challenges in figuring out \u2018does an opt out apply to this?\u2019. For example, if I wrote and published a blog that was a book review and in the course of that I was quoting from a novel, there is nothing in my blog which creates metadata that says \u2018this is my paragraph, this is the author\u2019s paragraph, this is my paragraph coming back through again\u2019, so if that author has exercised an opt out somewhere, how do you know that it attaches to the blog that I might then have published?\u201d Ilott said.<\/p>\n
Nandy, the UK\u2019s culture secretary, added the challenges around opt out \u201chadn\u2019t [been] anticipated or fully understood\u201d by the government before it indicated its preference for such a mechanism. She said the government doesn\u2019t \u201ccurrently know how to surmount\u201d the challenges with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean that they are insurmountable, but we don\u2019t currently have the answers to those, so at the moment we don\u2019t have a workable opt-out proposal on the table,\u201d Nandy said, adding that the government views it as the role of industry \u201cto find technical solutions to some of these challenges\u201d.<\/p>\n
Issues around enabling transparency too<\/p>\n
Problems in finding practical solutions to enable transparency over the use of copyrighted material in AI training were also highlighted to the Committee.<\/p>\n
Nandy said: \u201cThere are insufficient transparency tools at the moment for some of the transparency requirements that we as a government have committed to and one of the things we are doing is working with industry urging them to try and find the solutions to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Kendall, the working groups are due to meet again in February.<\/p>\n
Interventions over licensing?<\/p>\n
While the government is pushing some responsibility for finding solutions onto industry, the ministers acknowledged that the government also has important roles to play in relation to reform. Nandy said a degree of consensus is emerging on where there should be a \u201cdemarcation\u201d of roles, confirming that the government will legislate on the issue of transparency but generally avoid \u201cintervening overly in licensing deals which industry is already coming together to reach.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Nandy said the government could still intervene on licensing issues if it feels \u201csmaller players\u201d are being disadvantaged.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the deals that have been done work well for the bigger players; they don\u2019t necessarily work well for the smaller players,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re as concerned about them as we are about the bigger players, not least because the creative industries are an ecosystem \u2013 your Ed Sheerans start somewhere \u2013 and so we have got to make sure we are protecting those people as well. I think that is a role for government in stepping in where those deals are not necessarily serving the creative industries as a whole and making sure that we make this work for tech companies and for creatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
Calls for urgency acknowledged<\/p>\n
While the government is committed to legislating around transparency, it is less clear what other interventions it will pursue. Kendall said all the issues, including around transparency, licensing, and the expansion and practicality of new copyright exceptions, must \u201cwork together\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to Nandy, the responses to the AI copyright consultation have taught the government that \u201cthere are very different implications for different parts of the creative industries from the different models\u201d of reform that could be pursued. That, she said, requires the government to \u201ctake a far more nuanced approach\u201d and \u201cwork with different parts of the creative industries to address their very serious and in some cases existential challenge that is posed by the current system let alone any changes that we might make\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think we have also learned from looking at the experience of other countries \u2026 is that there is no perfect solution to this\u2026 There is no model out there in the world to follow that has got this completely right yet,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Nandy acknowledged the call from industry on both sides for urgent clarification of the law, but said the government wants to avoid ill-thought-through legislation: \u201cWe\u2019re keen to be able to provide clarity around this as soon as possible\u2026 But \u2026 if we rush into this and we get it wrong, we could make a mess, so we are not going to rush into it \u2013 we are going to take the time to work through with the working groups, but we appreciate there is an urgency around this and we want to move as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to work together to find a solution that we know can hold and legislate or regulate in order to underpin that,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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