Owen Meredith is Chief Executive of the News Media Association and a former Conservative Parliamentary Candidate.
The Conservative Party has a strong record of supporting the creative industries, further strengthening Britain’s status as a global leader in culture and the arts.
This has delivered a boom in innovation, economic growth, and jobs that have powered Britain and filled the Treasury’s coffers. Employment within the creative industries and GVA nearly doubled from 2010 to 2024, making it the fastest-growing sector of the economy.
A reliable supply of high-quality, English language content is central to future innovation in generative AI, and there is the potential for the UK to lead the world in this lucrative new market. Trustworthy news content is also essential in the ‘inference’ or ‘grounding’ process, where AI models search the web in real-time for information that can bring the model up to date, making a far more valuable product, and reduce the chance of harmful hallucinations, making the AI model far safer.
But that aspiration cannot become a reality if Labour goes ahead with plans to introduce a sweeping copyright exception which requires creators to ‘opt-out’ of having their content used for free. This made sound like a dull and technical measure that is ‘deregulatory’ and supports growth and innovation. But scratch below the headline and it’s anything but.
The proposed ‘opt-out’ regime for ‘text and data mining’ – the method used by generative AI firms to hoover up the content which fuels their models – is entirely unworkable, deeply regressive, and would put a huge burden on creators – including the smallest film producers, publishers and artists – to defend themselves against the might of Big Tech. In those conditions, what hope would self-employed creatives or SMEs have of asserting their rights?
In any case, weakening copyright law would not attract more generative AI investment; factors like energy costs, Labour’s burdensome employment laws, and access to skills are way more significant. The explosion in ‘small language models’ like DeepSeek has blown a hole in the Big Tech line that access to immense volumes of data (and huge amounts of electricity and computer chips) is a prerequisite to building a useful AI tool.
It is the quality of data that matters, and it is this valuable high-quality data that the UK creative industries excel in producing.British AI firms innovating in science, medicine, and climate change do not need free-reign access to copyrighted content to thrive.
The English Parliamentarians who first created copyright in 1709 would find it very odd to hear it now being re-framed as an intrusive regulation or stifling of free speech. Their ‘Act for the Encouragement of Learning’ was the ultimate deregulatory measure. It finally released content from the shackles of the Crown and allowed everyone to own their thoughts and creations, rather than the state.
Once everyone had this new ”intellectual property” they could buy, sell and licence it to others. This not only created wealth, jobs and tax income, but it also gave rise to a widespread intellectual commons that powered the Enlightenment. The system was so successful, it was copied by countries around the world.
Yet, even as the Labour government looks set to proceed with its plan to sell our cultural assets to a handful of US tech giants – dismantling another part of the last Conservative government’s legacy in the process – our party’s leadership has so far seemed content to sit on the sidelines and watch.
It’s certainly not a stance the 2.4 million people who work in the British creative industries would expect them to take. This disastrous Labour policy will have a significant impact on jobs and growth across every constituency in this country.
The fight back against Labour’s plans has already begun. Baroness Beeban Kidron’s copyright and AI amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill will soon be debated by MPs in Committee. These very modest provisions would ensure that AI firms that train or market their models in the UK comply with our copyright law, and be transparent about the content they have used.
These clear requirements would simply protect a pre-existing, long-established property right. These are principles all free-market Conservatives should be proud to stand up and defend.
These provisions do not constitute burdensome regulation. Again, it is Labour’s requirement for creators to ‘opt-out’ that would place unsustainable burdens on the smallest creators to proactively prevent their work from being used for free.
Tech firms’ claims that greater transparency would be too difficult to achieve, or would impinge on trade secrets, are entirely spurious. Giving an individual creator or a single creative business transparency over which of their own copyrighted works have been used – and nothing else – could not possibly give away valuable business information.
Moreover, it is entirely misleading for AI firms to claim they are unable to set out which individual articles, pictures, or books have been used in AI training – transparency will be easy for AI firms if they license creative data responsibly and ethically in the first place. And if they persist with this deception, then we must ask them: how can you possibly build a safe, reliable model if you cannot identify what content you have used to train it?
Others have sought to claim that it is impractical to impose our copyright law on models trained in other jurisdictions – but this provision merely makes explicit what the existing law already demands. Tech firms have threatened to withdraw their products repeatedly in the face of regulation they dislike, and these threats ultimately prove baseless.
Voters – both those who voted Conservative at the last general election and those who turned to other parties– expect the party to stand up for property rights and in doing so defend our £125 billion creative sector that rewards work, supports growth, provides jobs and generates tax revenue.
It’s time for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservative front bench to seize the initiative. The Conservatives must develop policies with a broad appeal.
Defending the creative industries against the AI robber barons is immensely popular: polling released by the Creative Rights in AI Coalition shows that 72 per cent of the population think AI companies should pay for the content used to train their models, while 80 per cent said AI companies should be required to make public all the information that their models have been trained upon.
If Conservatives truly believe in free speech and open markets, then let’s support the copyright that gave rise to the knowledge-based economy we know and love. And fight to ensure that no platform, business, person or government can own our ideas or use our thoughts without first getting our permission.
Our British creative sectors are a jewel in the crown of our proud nation. It’s time to stand up and defend them. To do otherwise would not only betray our cultural heritage, but also thoroughly undermine the Conservative’s claim to be the party of economic competence.
Owen Meredith is Chief Executive of the News Media Association and a former Conservative Parliamentary Candidate.
The Conservative Party has a strong record of supporting the creative industries, further strengthening Britain’s status as a global leader in culture and the arts.
This has delivered a boom in innovation, economic growth, and jobs that have powered Britain and filled the Treasury’s coffers. Employment within the creative industries and GVA nearly doubled from 2010 to 2024, making it the fastest-growing sector of the economy.
A reliable supply of high-quality, English language content is central to future innovation in generative AI, and there is the potential for the UK to lead the world in this lucrative new market. Trustworthy news content is also essential in the ‘inference’ or ‘grounding’ process, where AI models search the web in real-time for information that can bring the model up to date, making a far more valuable product, and reduce the chance of harmful hallucinations, making the AI model far safer.
But that aspiration cannot become a reality if Labour goes ahead with plans to introduce a sweeping copyright exception which requires creators to ‘opt-out’ of having their content used for free. This made sound like a dull and technical measure that is ‘deregulatory’ and supports growth and innovation. But scratch below the headline and it’s anything but.
The proposed ‘opt-out’ regime for ‘text and data mining’ – the method used by generative AI firms to hoover up the content which fuels their models – is entirely unworkable, deeply regressive, and would put a huge burden on creators – including the smallest film producers, publishers and artists – to defend themselves against the might of Big Tech. In those conditions, what hope would self-employed creatives or SMEs have of asserting their rights?
In any case, weakening copyright law would not attract more generative AI investment; factors like energy costs, Labour’s burdensome employment laws, and access to skills are way more significant. The explosion in ‘small language models’ like DeepSeek has blown a hole in the Big Tech line that access to immense volumes of data (and huge amounts of electricity and computer chips) is a prerequisite to building a useful AI tool.
It is the quality of data that matters, and it is this valuable high-quality data that the UK creative industries excel in producing.British AI firms innovating in science, medicine, and climate change do not need free-reign access to copyrighted content to thrive.
The English Parliamentarians who first created copyright in 1709 would find it very odd to hear it now being re-framed as an intrusive regulation or stifling of free speech. Their ‘Act for the Encouragement of Learning’ was the ultimate deregulatory measure. It finally released content from the shackles of the Crown and allowed everyone to own their thoughts and creations, rather than the state.
Once everyone had this new ”intellectual property” they could buy, sell and licence it to others. This not only created wealth, jobs and tax income, but it also gave rise to a widespread intellectual commons that powered the Enlightenment. The system was so successful, it was copied by countries around the world.
Yet, even as the Labour government looks set to proceed with its plan to sell our cultural assets to a handful of US tech giants – dismantling another part of the last Conservative government’s legacy in the process – our party’s leadership has so far seemed content to sit on the sidelines and watch.
It’s certainly not a stance the 2.4 million people who work in the British creative industries would expect them to take. This disastrous Labour policy will have a significant impact on jobs and growth across every constituency in this country.
The fight back against Labour’s plans has already begun. Baroness Beeban Kidron’s copyright and AI amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill will soon be debated by MPs in Committee. These very modest provisions would ensure that AI firms that train or market their models in the UK comply with our copyright law, and be transparent about the content they have used.
These clear requirements would simply protect a pre-existing, long-established property right. These are principles all free-market Conservatives should be proud to stand up and defend.
These provisions do not constitute burdensome regulation. Again, it is Labour’s requirement for creators to ‘opt-out’ that would place unsustainable burdens on the smallest creators to proactively prevent their work from being used for free.
Tech firms’ claims that greater transparency would be too difficult to achieve, or would impinge on trade secrets, are entirely spurious. Giving an individual creator or a single creative business transparency over which of their own copyrighted works have been used – and nothing else – could not possibly give away valuable business information.
Moreover, it is entirely misleading for AI firms to claim they are unable to set out which individual articles, pictures, or books have been used in AI training – transparency will be easy for AI firms if they license creative data responsibly and ethically in the first place. And if they persist with this deception, then we must ask them: how can you possibly build a safe, reliable model if you cannot identify what content you have used to train it?
Others have sought to claim that it is impractical to impose our copyright law on models trained in other jurisdictions – but this provision merely makes explicit what the existing law already demands. Tech firms have threatened to withdraw their products repeatedly in the face of regulation they dislike, and these threats ultimately prove baseless.
Voters – both those who voted Conservative at the last general election and those who turned to other parties– expect the party to stand up for property rights and in doing so defend our £125 billion creative sector that rewards work, supports growth, provides jobs and generates tax revenue.
It’s time for Kemi Badenoch and the Conservative front bench to seize the initiative. The Conservatives must develop policies with a broad appeal.
Defending the creative industries against the AI robber barons is immensely popular: polling released by the Creative Rights in AI Coalition shows that 72 per cent of the population think AI companies should pay for the content used to train their models, while 80 per cent said AI companies should be required to make public all the information that their models have been trained upon.
If Conservatives truly believe in free speech and open markets, then let’s support the copyright that gave rise to the knowledge-based economy we know and love. And fight to ensure that no platform, business, person or government can own our ideas or use our thoughts without first getting our permission.
Our British creative sectors are a jewel in the crown of our proud nation. It’s time to stand up and defend them. To do otherwise would not only betray our cultural heritage, but also thoroughly undermine the Conservative’s claim to be the party of economic competence.