AI licences
The licensing options currently in place or in development for ALCS members are:
Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Generative AI Solution
This is a licence for the training of generative AI systems. This licence is still in the initial stages and is operated on an opt-in basis, giving rightsholders choice and control over their works. At this stage, only books and articles in magazines and journals will be included.
The licence will provide the opportunity for rightsholders who are not in a position to negotiate direct licensing agreements with AI developers, to receive remuneration for the use of their works in generative AI models and applications whilst ensuring that their content is protected, and copyright is respected. When a licence is sold, members with works included in the licence’s repertoire will be financially compensated.
This is the first licence of its kind, and as such, we are not currently able to estimate the scale of revenue generated by this licence, or what level of payments this would mean for participating members.
ALCS Members
ALCS members who hold the relevant rights in works implicated in these licences will be contacted by email and invited to participate by setting their preferences on an individual work level for this licence. Members will be able to do this in the AI Licences Preference Centre, located within the members’ area of the ALCS website.
Not yet a member?
If you’re not a member of ALCS, but your publisher has opted in to the licence and you’d like to sign up too – then find out how to join here.
If you have any questions about the licence and what it could mean for you, please contact communications@alcs.co.uk.
FAQs
This is a licence, developed by CLA, ALCS and PLS to compensate writers for the use of their works to train generative AI systems. Those who opt in their eligible works to the licence will be financially compensated when their works are included for use in this licence.
These were permissions added to existing CLA licences for the use of works when prompting AI systems. The CLA Generative AI Solution is a new licence that covers the training of AI systems.
We are still in the early stages of the development of this solution, and no licences have yet been sold. As such, we are not currently able to estimate the scale of future income that may be collected for members.
Currently, we are only inviting members to take part in this licence if your publisher has also chosen to participate. If your publisher signs up for the licence, we will contact you by email inviting you to let us know whether you want to be included, by setting your preferences in the Preference Centre.
At present, this licence is limited to books only.
Although you are able to set your preferences in the Preference Centre for all of your books, only those works we contacted you about are eligible to be included in the licence at this stage. Whenever new publishers opt in to the licence, we will contact you to let you know.
If we have contacted you about your publisher opting in to your scheme, the Preference Centre will be visible to you when logging in to your ALCS online account at alcs.co.uk/login. Scroll down to “AI Licences Preference Centre” or select it from the drop-down menu in the top right of the page.
No, you can set the preferencesfor all of your books at once. You also have the option of setting your preferences on an individual work-by-work basis. Watch our video tutorial which guides you through the process.
Not necessarily, it has become clear that some AI companies have used writers’ works to train their models, regardless of whether they have permission or a licence. Indeed, many works have already been ingested by AI models for training. What it does mean is that your work is not included in this licence’s repertoire and so you won’t be paid when future licences are sold.
As this is an opt-in licence, if you don’t respond we will not include your works in the ALCS-mandated licence repertoire.
Yes, the Preference Centre will be available on an ongoing basis, and you can edit your preferences at any time.
We will be keeping members updated as to when any of the Generative AI training solution licences have been sold.
At this stage, our sense is that the kind of organisation likely to purchase this licence will be those seeking to deploy generative AI systems to provide professional or informational content for their sector. One example would be a medical research body working in life sciences seeking to train an AI system on relevant academic published content to provide intelligence to researchers or others working in that field.
Workplace AI permissions
On 1 May 2025, CLA added additional permissions to the CLA licences that are sold to businesses and many public sector organisations, which a number of members receive income from, to include the ability for organisations to use licensed works as ‘prompts’ when using certain Generative AI tools in the workplace. We have now received the first monies from these permissions and will be paying it to relevant members in September.
The licences cover existing and increasingly commonplace activities in the workplace where individuals use the available technology to analyse and extract information from works, for example by summarising the key points within an academic journal article. These licences do not cover the use of works for training generative AI systems.
Who is impacted?
The changes to these licence terms will impact members who write books and articles and receive title specific income from CLA from the commercial and public sector licences, which will appear as one of the following on your statement:
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd/Code No./United Kingdom/Photocopying/Business/Date
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd/Code No./United Kingdom/Photocopying/Government/Date
Are all titles included?
No, not all titles are included in these licences. You can find out if your works are included by using the CLA check permissions tool. You can do that here by entering your ISBN or the ISSN of the publication you write for and selecting the ‘Business’ licence from the dropdown options.
If your work has been included by your publisher, the following message will appear:
If your work hasn’t been included by your publisher, no message will appear.
If your work is included, and you’d like it excluded from this element of the CLA licensing scheme, then please contact us at communications@alcs.co.uk to let us know.
