On 11 June, the UK’s Data Use and Access Bill finally passed through the House of Lords and will soon be law. The Bill was introduced to the House of Lords in October 2024 and has since struggled to pass through the Upper House after the addition of successive amendments on the use of copyrighted materials for training AI models.

The proposed amendments would require AI developers to be transparent about the material they use to train their models, and more specifically to require consent from content creators before scraping their work as training data.

Detractors of the amendment say existing UK copyright laws are sufficient to protect copyrighted works for AI model training, without extra permissions, and that obtaining consent would be so onerous as to hamper AI development in the UK.

Baroness Kidron has been spearheading the House of Lords campaign for extended protections for creatives. Supporters say that giving Big Tech free rein to train its GenAI models on publicly available creative content without permission, payment, or transparency renders existing copyright meaningless. 

In addition, speculation remains about government plans to overhaul existing copyright law to make AI development even more frictionless for tech companies.

Lord Holmes of Richmond, a member of the House of Lords, is calling for a “small, perfectly formed UK AI authority” to address the growing and increasingly intractable issue of AI copyright. Those on both side of the debate view regulation as existential for their industries.

At London Tech Week’s AI Summit, on 11 June, Lord Holmes explained how his vision for a UK AI authority would seek to make these entrenched positions less binary. He described the current impasse as, “innovation or regulation, and never the twain shall meet.”

“History tells us, not least recent history, is that right-size regulation is an enabler, a perfect base for innovation, for investment, for citizens, created for consumers,” added Lord Holmes.

The unprecedented pace of AI development merits a dedicated authority that could ensure regulation is more agile. “You could almost identify the exact point in the legislative process for the EUA act. When Gen AI came and T boned that whole process, you sit smashing into this perfectly crafted bit of legislation,” he said.

The British government’s approach to regulate within existing structures will not work for AI, says Holmes. “There is no current competent regulation,” he said.

An AI regulator is the critical component of a private AI regulation Bill that Lord Holmes has introduced. “Don’t think big, not a do-it-all-regulator, but an agile, nimble, horizontally focused authority to be the custodian of the principles of UK AI regulation and a centre of excellence and expertise that all the other industry specific regulators could draw upon. Crucially, it would be horizontally focused to enable that guiding mind, that consistency,” said Holmes.