Government Responds to Lords’ LLM Report
The government responds to the House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee’s report on large language models.
Last week, the government responded to the House of Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee’s report on large language models. PLS submitted written evidence and Dan Conway provided in person evidence late last year as part of the Committee’s inquiry. In addition, a letter from the chair of the Committee, Baroness Stowell, to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, Michelle Donelan MP, providing the Committee’s view on the government’s response was also published.
The government’s response is largely a restatement of its messaging on AI. Namely, that the government is taking a pro-innovation approach to AI regulation and is looking to balance innovation with the need to manage risk. The response details the work already carried out by the government, government AI bodies, and regulators. The response also contains information on the various forms of government funding, significant private investments, and areas where the government is looking to improve knowledge.
Responding to the Committee’s recommendations on copyright, the government acknowledges the UK has a world-leading copyright framework and restates its commitment to maintaining a robust framework that rewards human creativity. However, it adds that the interpretation of copyright law and how it applies to AI models is disputed and this has created a complex and challenging area.
Within their response, the government mention collective licensing as an example of a market-led approach that can provide ‘at scale-access to data and can enable creators to be renumerated for their work’. The response adds that the government is working with the creative and journalism sectors to better understand the solutions available to provide expanded access to high quality, at scale data sources that are required for LLM training.
Regarding transparency, the government agree with the Committee that greater transparency is needed over the use of copyright protected materials in large language models and is separately engaging with stakeholders to get a better understanding of what is technically feasible and what would be proportionate. The government acknowledges that transparency is important to model safety and the mitigation of bias, but also the attribution of outputs.
The response states that work on transparency of AI models is being undertaken by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and the Intellectual Property Office, who are working at ministerial level to build upon the work carried out during the failed voluntary code of practice process, and have also been understand views across the creative and AI sectors.
In reply, Baroness Stowell’s letter is highly critical of the government’s response and the position that the government has taken on copyright. In her letter, Baroness Stowell describes the government’s record on copyright as being ‘inadequate and deteriorating’ and, whilst mindful of the complexity involved, the government has not done enough to address the problems that the Committee’s report outlines, nor have the next steps been made clear.
Baroness Stowell also highlights the increasing need to act swiftly on copyright due to how LLMs have now become established and business models ‘entrenched and normalised’. She adds that more work needs to be done to establish whether only large publishers will benefit from licensing deals, with the long tail losing out.
PLS welcomes the government’s acknowledgement of collective licensing as an approach to providing legitimate access to content for AI developers and an opportunity for rightsholders to receive renumeration for the use of their works. We firmly believe a mix of direct licensing and voluntary non-exclusive collective licensing provides a mutually beneficial solution and the best way for rightsholders – large, medium, and small - to consent to the use of their works, to ensure they receive compensation, and to uphold the UK's copyright framework that underpins the huge success of not only the publishing industry, but the UK's wider creative industries. As part of our mission to develop effective licensing opportunities, PLS is working with the Copyright Licensing Agency and its other members to develop voluntary licensing solutions that facilitate access to the content needed by AI developers but that also protects the value of published content for rightsholders.
As proud champions of copyright, PLS agrees with the concerns expressed in Baroness Stowell’s letter to the secretary of state and asks the government to prioritise copyright and take a clearer, firmer, and more supportive position that would protect rightsholders, support the UK’s creative industries, and ensure human creativity is incentivised. In addition, PLS asks that the government works at pace to introduce transparency provisions that would allow rightsholders to best protect their interests and ensure that large language models are developed and operate safely and in compliance with UK law.