UK photographers and image-makers should be concerned about the proposed AI law

> This new proposed Text and Data Mining exception for commercial purposes – by the UK government – undermines this by freely allowing the machine mining of all imagery published online for any use by anyone, including AI developers. It would cover both copyright works and those protected by the UK Database Right.

>With serious economic consequences for any creator, but most especially photographers with data-rich images, this proposal completely short-circuits the licensing process allowing AI developers and others free commercial access to content for which, under normal circumstances, they would have to license and pay for.

>On a practical level, it would mean that AI bots/crawlers would scan or read any digital images (much like many of the image infringement identification services we use already do), on your websites or social media accounts, and extract any data the bots have been programmed to search for (extracting both an image and the embedded metadata from the original source and any versions found elsewhere) at neural speeds. The bots would make copies for the AI platform in order to ‘learn’ from and, potentially, create new images.

>Creators are doubly harmed in that not only is a potential revenue stream being removed but the very platforms being trained using their works may ultimately replace the work they currently do! Think e-Comm fashion on artificially-generated models or make-up on AI-rendered faces, much of which is already happening.