Members of the House of Lords have urged the government to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) policy addressing copyright and competition concerns in the UK.
“The government’s reticence to take meaningful action amounts to a de facto endorsement of tech firms’ practices,” Lords communications committee chair Tina Stowell wrote to science secretary Michelle Donelan on Thursday.
Action on copyright has been “inadequate and deteriorating”, she argued, adding that “market competition [should be] an explicit policy objective” in terms of AI.
Following the rapid adoption of AI over the past year, concerns have grown over the use of articles and other companies’ work to train models, alongside the existence of so few developers.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority had warned of “real concerns” over the market last month, noting Alphabet Google, Apple, Microsoft Corp, Meta Platforms , Amazon.com and chipmaker NVIDIA Corp were among the industry’s few big players.
The Financial Times has since signed a licensing agreement with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, allowing models to be trained using the likes of archived content and in turn warding off copyright concerns.
However, Stowell noted it was “worth exploring whether [...] a few larger publishers will obtain some licensing deals while a longer tail of smaller outlets lose out”.
She added: “The issues with copyright are manifesting right now and problematic business models are fast becoming entrenched and normalised.”