An update on AI licensing

For better or worse, AI is here to stay. In the past year, it has continued to proliferate at pace, with recent surveys showing 70% of the UK uses AI tools on a daily basis, and organisations beginning to integrate AI into their working practices. We have also seen Governments around the world prioritise the needs of tech companies ahead of the rights and livelihoods of the creators whose works generative AI systems are trained on. This is both unfair and untenable, and we have made our view on this clear. Since my blog this time last year, we have been busy doing what we said then: pursuing licensing options for our members based on choice, transparency and consultation with writers’ organisations.

Across the creative industries, there is a clear and unified view: effective licensing beats blunt policy interventions every time. The loosening of copyright rules, as has been proposed, is both counterproductive and unfair to writers. Giving creators the option to license their works provides the tech sector with access to content, whilst giving creators genuine choice and control over the use of their works, and the ability to be paid for these uses, if that is what they choose.

This is a view you shared in last year’s survey on AI, with 81% of respondents supporting the option of a collective licence if ALCS was able to secure one. We have been working closely with our partners at the Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and Publishers’ Licensing Services to explore exactly that – building transparent collective licensing options based on agreement between authors and publishers.

The CLA has already included permissions on some if its existing licenses to include the option to be paid for workplace uses of licensed works as “prompts”, however this specifically excludes the critical use of works to train and develop AI systems. We have been working with the CLA on a licence for training generative AI, and like many CLA schemes, the focus will be on professional content in areas like business and academia, where licensing is already well understood and widely used. We believe this is a sensible starting point as we seek to test and learn with this new type of licensing. The licence would also be forward-looking, as compensation for past activities is bound up in the numerous court cases being brought on behalf of authors and their publishers.

Our members’ survey on AI confirms our clear understanding that the use of works to train generative AI systems is a sensitive area, made more so by the cavalier attitude of tech companies to copyright and creators’ rights, as well as some ill-conceived government interventions, including in the UK. For that reason, our mandate for the collective licence would be based on choice, requiring individual members to opt-in works for inclusion in the licensable repertoire.

The creative industries are united in a preference for licensing over the blunt and unfair approach of new exceptions to copyright law, however, an incomplete licensing solution could add weight to arguments made by the AI companies – or indeed the Government – that licensing is too difficult or inadequate. Our current approach, underpinned by our constitution and Distribution Rules, enables ALCS to identify and contact non-members whose works have generated licence income. Indeed, many of you may have joined ALCS this way. Given the sensitivities around AI and copyright, however, when it comes to non-members whose works may be implicated in collective licensing, we are exploring a more formal approach.

UK copyright law includes a provision enabling collective rights management organisation like ALCS to apply to the Government for an authorisation to represent non-members, known as an Extended Collective Licence (ECL). This is a statutory process including a number of safeguards to protect the rights and interests of non-members. These safeguards include the requirement to conduct a poll of ALCS members prior to an application, a publicity campaign to advertise those non-members’ works which are potentially licensable, and a clear and efficacious process by which such works can be excluded from the licence.

If we do decide to pursue this course of action, our first step will be to consult you, our members, to ensure that our application has your support. Whether ALCS has an ECL or not won’t impact you directly in terms of mandates, as members of licensable works will be approached individually to opt-in, but we believe the ECL would help to ensure that we are in a good bargaining position going forwards to optimise fees for writers from collective licensing.

You’ll hear more from us on this issue and our next steps in the New Year. We know it’s vitally important that we get this right, that is why we are moving forward steadily and transparently, in regular consultation with our partners at other writers’ organisations, and always with the interests of our members front and centre. We want to ensure you have a genuine choice around the use of your works, and to be paid appropriately if that is what you choose. Rest assured, we continue to be guided by one purpose: to protect authors’ rights and create the opportunity for them to be paid fairly for the use of their work.

Barbara Hayes
Chief Executive

You can learn more about our campaign work around here.