I was reading the New York Times earlier this week when a pop quiz along the lines of the above title popped up, which I of course then proceeded to take. I am delighted to announce I do in fact prefer (and can still spot!) human writing – however, the exercise got me thinking about where we are headed with the development of the newest and shiniest iterations of generative AI.
AI tools are here to stay and can be extremely helpful, but like any new technology we need to be able to regulate them in order to establish a successful framework within which these tools actually enhance our lives, without dramatically stripping them of their creative elements.
I know several people who utilise AI for nearly every personal and professional task, however, as a lawyer most if not all of my value-add is represented by the words that I write and so essentially my copyright – perhaps that is why I feel so strongly about copyright protection, now especially within the context of AI models.
There has been much discourse lately in terms of exactly how to regulate AI tools and how to balance this with the need of staying “tech-forward”. More recently, the Communications and Digital Committee (a select committee of the House of Lords appointed to consider the media, digital and creative industries) has published its findings on “AI, copyright and the creative industries” (which you can access in full here: UK creative industries face a clear and present danger from generative AI - Committees - UK Parliament).
In summary, the Committee calls on the UK Government to protect our creative industries from the danger of “uncredited and unremunerated use of copyrighted material to train AI models” and recommends strengthening UK protections for creators against the widespread unlicensed use of protected works from AI developers.
While the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 was passed into law in June 2025 and took a fairly moderate “pro-innovation” approach, by providing a streamlined regime for at least some AI processing, as things stand at the time of writing this article, we still await news of the UK Government’s proposed AI bill which is poised to address key issues of safety and copyright around AI but was postponed last summer.
If you need advice on the subject-matter of this article, then you can contact me as below:
01256 305542 or francesca.lombardi@lambbrooks.com