UK government signals it will not force tech firms to disclose how they train AI
Campaigners have accused ministers of lying to parliament and the creative industries after the government signalled it would not force AI companies to disclose how they train their models.
Ministers are holding firm in a standoff with the House of Lords, which has called for artists to be offered immediate copyright protection against artificial intelligence companies.
Peers voted by 221 to 116 on Wednesday to insist on an amendment to the data bill that would force AI firms to be transparent about what copyrighted material they use to train their models.
In an amendment tabled on Friday, the government dismissed the Lords' request and reiterated its promise to publish an economic impact assessment and technical reports on the future of AI and copyright regulation.
Beeban Kidron, the crossbench peer and film director who has campaigned on behalf of the industry, said during Wednesday's debate that she would 'accept anything that the Commons does' after this week. 'I will not stand in front of your Lordships again and press our case,' she said.
But the News Media Association (NMA), which represents publishers including the Guardian, said peers could table further amendments to the data bill when it returns to the Lords next Wednesday.
Industry figures said the government was acting in bad faith by not addressing the Lords' concerns and called for it to make further amendments of its own before MPs vote on it on Tuesday.
Kidron said: 'The government has repeatedly taken all protections for UK copyrights holders out of the data bill. In doing so they have shafted the creative industries, and they have proved willing to decimate the UK's second-biggest industrial sector. They have lied to parliament, and they are lying to the sector.'
She said the government's action 'adds another sector to the growing number that have an unbridgeable gap of trust with the government'.
Owen Meredith, the chief executive of the NMA, said: 'The government's refusal to listen to the strong view of the Lords … risks undermining the legislative process.
'There is still time for the government to do the right thing, and take transparency powers in this bill. This would be a key step towards rebuilding trust with a £126bn industry.'
The government's approach to copyright has drawn the ire of major creative artists and organisations including Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and the National Theatre, with Elton John describing the situation as an 'existential issue' this week.
Opponents of the plans have warned that even if the attempts to insert clauses into the data bill fail, the government could be challenged in the courts over the proposed changes.
The consultation on copyright changes, which is due to produce its findings before the end of the year, contains four options: to let AI companies use copyrighted work without permission, alongside an option for artists to 'opt out' of the process; to leave the situation unchanged; to require AI companies to seek licences for using copyrighted work; and to allow AI firms to use copyrighted work with no opt-out for creative companies and individuals.
The technology secretary, Peter Kyle, has said the copyright-waiver-plus-opt-out scenario is no longer the government's preferred option, but Kidron's amendments have attempted to head off that option by effectively requiring tech companies to seek licensing deals for any content that they use to train their AI models.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Meta signs deal with nuclear plant to power AI and datacenters for 20 years
Meta on Tuesday said it had struck an agreement to keep one nuclear reactor of a US utility company in Illinois operating for 20 years. Meta's deal with Constellation Energy is the social networking company's first with a nuclear power plant. Other large tech companies are looking to secure electricity as US power demand rises significantly in part due to the needs of artificial intelligence and datacenters. Google has reached agreements to supply its datacenters with nuclear power via a half-dozen small reactors built by a California utility company. Microsoft's similar contract will restart the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, the site of the most serious nuclear accident and radiation leak in US history. Illinois helps subsidize Constellation Energy's nuclear plant, the Clinton Clean Energy Center, with a ratepayer-funded zero-emissions credit program that awards benefits for the generation of power virtually free of carbon emissions. That expires in 2027, when Meta's power purchase agreement will support the plant with an unspecified amount of money to help with relicensing and operations. Related: Three Mile Island nuclear reactor to restart to power Microsoft AI operations The deal allows Constellation to expand Clinton, which has a capacity of 1,121 megawatts, by 30MW. The plant powers the equivalent of about 800,000 US homes. Clinton began operating in 1987 and last year Constellation applied with the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to renew its license through 2047. The deal could serve as a model for other big tech companies to support existing nuclear while they also plan to power datacenters with new nuclear and other energy sources. Urvi Parekh, head of global energy at Meta, said: 'One of the things that we hear very acutely from utilities is they want to have certainty that power plants operating today will continue to operate.' Joe Dominguez, CEO of Constellation, said, 'We're definitely having conversations with other clients, not just in Illinois, but really across the country, to step in and do what Meta has done, which is essentially give us a backstop so that we could make the investments needed to relicense these assets and keep them operating.' Bobby Wendell, an official at a unit of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said the agreement will deliver a 'stable work environment' for workers at the plant. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data


TechCrunch
16 minutes ago
- TechCrunch
Report: Meta taps Scale AI's Alexandr Wang to join new ‘superintelligence' lab
In Brief Meta plans to unveil a new AI research lab dedicated to 'superintelligence' as the company works to compete in the AI race, according to several reports. Meta has tapped Scale AI founder and CEO Alexandr Wang to join the new lab, The New York Times reports. Meta has been in talks to invest billions into Scale AI as part of a deal that would bring Scale AI employees to Meta. Meta has also been poaching lead researchers from OpenAI and Google, per the Times. The new lab comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg grows frustrated with his company's AI shortfalls. Bloomberg reports he has been meeting with AI researchers and engineers at his homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto to personally recruit a team of around 50 people, including a new head of AI research. Sources told Bloomberg that Zuckerberg believes Meta can and should outpace other tech companies gunning to achieve AGI, the still-undefined idea that AI systems could exceed human performance in many tasks. Meta AI last month reached 1 billion monthly active users.


Fast Company
16 minutes ago
- Fast Company
OpenAI and Anthropic are getting cozy with government. What could possibly go wrong?
While the world and private enterprise are adopting AI rapidly in their workflows, government isn't far behind. The U.K. government has said early trials of AI-powered productivity tools can shave two weeks of labor off a year's work, and AI companies are adapting to that need. More than 1,700 AI use cases have been recorded in the U.S. government, long before Elon Musk's DOGE entered the equation and accelerated AI adoption throughout the public sector. Federal policies introduced in April on AI adoption and procurement have pushed this trend further. It's unsurprising that big tech companies are rolling out their own specialist models to meet that demand. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude chatbot, announced last week a series of models tailored for use by government employees. These include features such as the ability to handle classified materials and understand some of the bureaucratic language that plagues official documents. Anthropic has said its models are already deployed by agencies 'at the highest level of U.S. national security, and access to these models is limited to those who operate in such classified environments.' The announcement follows a similar one by OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, which released its own government-tailored AI models in January to 'streamline government agencies' access to OpenAI's frontier models.' But AI experts worry about governments becoming overly reliant on AI models, which can hallucinate information, inherit biases that discriminate against certain groups at scale, or steer policy in misguided directions. They also express concern over governments being locked into specific providers, who may later increase prices that taxpayers would be left to fund. 'I worry about governments using this kind of technology and relying on tech companies, and in particular, tech companies who have proven to be quite untrustworthy,' says Carissa Véliz, who researches AI ethics at the University of Oxford. She points out that the generative AI revolution so far, sparked by the November 2022 release of ChatGPT, has seen governments scrambling to retrofit rules and regulations in areas such as copyright to accommodate tech companies after they've bent those rules. 'It just shows a power relationship there that doesn't look good for government,' says Véliz. 'Government is supposed to be the legislator, the one making the rules and enforcing the rules.' Beyond those moral concerns, she also worries about the financial stakes involved. 'There's just a sheer dependency on a company that has financial interests, that is based in a different country, in a situation in which geopolitics is getting quite complicated,' says Véliz, explaining why countries outside the United States might hesitate to sign on to use ClaudeGov or ChatGPT Gov. It's the same argument the U.S. uses about overreliance on TikTok, which has Chinese ties, amid fears that figures like Donald Trump could pressure U.S.-based firms to act in politically motivated ways. OpenAI didn't respond to Fast Company 's request for comment. A spokesperson for Anthropic says the company is committed to transparency, citing published work on model risks, a detailed system card, and collaborations with the U.S. and U.K. governments to test AI systems. Some fear that AI companies are securing 'those big DoD bucks,' as programmer Ashe Dryden put it on Mastodon, and could perpetuate that revenue by fostering dependency on their specific models. The rollout of these models reflects broader shifts in the tech landscape that increasingly tie government, national security and technology together. For example, defense tech firm Anduril recently raised $5 billion in a new funding round that values the company at over $30 billion. Others have argued that the release of these government-specific models by AI companies 'isn't [about] national security. This is narrative laundering,' as one LinkedIn commenter put it. The idea is that these moves echo the norms already set by big government rather than challenging them, potentially reinforcing existing issues. 'I've always been a sceptic of a single supplier for IT services, and this is no exception,' says Andres Guadamuz, an AI researcher at the University of Sussex. Guadamuz believes the development of government-specific AI models is still in its early phase, and urges decisionmakers to pause before signing deals. 'Governments should keep their options open,' he says. 'Particularly with a crowded AI market, large entities such as the government can have a better negotiating position.'