European Parliament and House of Lords publish reports on AI and copyright: policy directions for artificial intelligence and copyright in the EU and the UK

Two policy reports published almost simultaneously by the European Parliament and the UK House of Lords converge on a ‘licensing-first’ approach to reconcile the interests of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry and the creative sector. The UK House of Lords favours market-driven and collective licensing models under existing copyright law, while the European Parliament advocates for maintaining the ‘opt-out’ system under Article 4(3) of Directive (EU) 2019/790. Both reports call for stricter transparency obligations to enable the establishment of licensing markets. This includes requiring AI developers to provide more granular disclosures of training data and the development of machine-readable technological standards. These standards would help rights holders declare opt-outs and allow AI providers to verify the copyright status of the data they consume. While agreement exists, at this stage, in the general policy approach, the reports differ in their details. This constitutes a missed opportunity to find a common policy ground and enter into a dialogue on developing copyright AI governance in Europe. Moreover, both approaches seem to leave crucial decisions to market forces—a choice likely to work to the detriment of individual creatives.