The intersection of AI and intellectual property as the UK grapples with copyright challenges.
The UK Government recently published its eagerly awaited Report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence (AI) (“the Report”) in compliance with the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, which was also accompanied by a separate economic impact assessment.
The Report followed a consultation process between December 2024 and February 2025 with a number of respondents, which included creators and right holders, AI developers, academics, and legal professionals.
After strong and apparently effective lobbying from the creative industries, the UK Government has confirmed in the Report that it no longer has a “preferred option” on copyright reform, having previously supported a proposal allowing tech companies to use copyrighted work unless rights holders opted out. This significant policy shift was less surprising given that in advance of the Report’s recent publication on 18 March 2026, the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee published its own report on 6 March 2026 calling on the Government to rule out its “preferred option”.
Intellectual property has become a key battleground in the ongoing development of AI because the technology requires vast amounts of data, which inevitably includes copyright-protected work taken from the open web, to develop tools such as chatbots and image generators.
There is however some disappointment that the Report offers no firm commitment to changes to the UK law for now, but the Report does at least offer some useful future direction albeit with no concrete deadlines. The Government's current position is that it will not introduce copyright reform until it is confident that any changes will meet its objectives for the economy and UK citizens.
The rapid speed at which AI is developing does however pose some immediate concerns, for example in relation to digital replicas (i.e. the use of AI to replicate or mimic the appearance or voice of individuals - variously referred to as “digital replicas” or “deepfakes”) and the Report signals that this is an area where the Government may be more willing to act and that could include considering whether a new personality right may be appropriate.
In the absence of any imminent changes to the UK’s copyright regime, right holders and AI developers will continue to look to the courts to resolve questions which remain open, most notably seen in Getty -v- Stablity AI (which concerned secondary copyright infringement) and this may well lead to more litigation in the UK as the vehicle for determining answers to these difficult questions.
If you would like to discuss how these developments may impact your organisation, please get in touch with Weightmans’ commercial litigation team, who can provide tailored advice on navigating the evolving AI and intellectual property landscape.
