SoA demands AI firms seek consent, provide ‘appropriate remuneration’ for use of copyright work

In the UK, the Society of Authors (SoA) has written to tech companies, demanding they have the consent of authors before using their work in the development of artificial intelligence (AI), reports the Bookseller.

The letter was sent to companies including Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Apple and Meta, on behalf of the SoA’s more than 12,000 members. The letter states that the use of copyright works by AI developers without the licence or consent of the author ‘amounts to copyright infringement’, adding that further infringement happens when ‘the AI model is used to generate a work […] which reproduces the whole or a substantial part of the copyright work’.

The letter also states that such practices are ‘plainly against UK law as well as international copyright regulations’ and urges these companies to instead ‘agree to terms on a commercial basis with respective rights-holders’ through licensing opportunities.

The SoA’s members voted to write to tech companies on this issue at an extraordinary general meeting in May. The Creative Rights Alliance (CRA) issued a similar letter to tech companies on behalf of its member organisations (including the SoA), which collectively represent over 500,000 creators, earlier this month.

The SoA’s letter gives tech companies seven days to respond to acknowledge receipt and 21 days to offer a ‘substantive response’. It requests the identification of ‘works which have been used to date to develop AI models’; a system for requests for permission to use authors’ works; offers of ‘appropriate remuneration’ for such permissions; and the removal from the AI systems of ‘any work which has been used without permission’, along with provision of ‘evidence of compliance’.

Category: International news