The consultation is now closed. Please check our campaign page for further updates
On 17 December the Government launched a consultation on AI and copyright.
The Government’s proposed plans on AI and copyright will weaken your copyright protections and allow AI companies to use your work without permission or payment.
But we are fighting back and we need our members to do the same. Please respond to the Government’s consultation on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence by midnight on 25 February 2025. We are strongly encouraging our members to submit their own responses to the consultation – the more responses the Government receives, the better.
We have produced a briefing on how to respond to the consultation and the key points that need to be made. Read the briefing.
Please send your responses in a personal capacity and explain how they will affect you as an individual creator.
You do not need to answer every question of the consultation and can just write a letter explaining your concerns if you prefer.
You can submit responses by saving your response as a Word or PDF file and sending it to copyrightconsultation@ipo.gov.uk or by filling out the online form.
Please drop us a line to let us know if you have submitted a response, and share your response with us if you are happy to do so. Email john@writersguild.org.uk
Data (Use and Access) Bill
Thanks to our members who wrote to their MPs in the run-up to the second reading of the Data (Use and Access) Bill in the House of Commons on Wednesday 12 February.
Baroness Kidron recently won a series of important amendments to the Bill in the House of Lords, which help to strengthen copyright and also transparency requirements to help writers and other rights holders identify if their work has been used by AI developers. The Bill will next go to committee stage and we’ll be keeping members posted on how they can continue to keep the pressure up.
WGGB member and screenwriter Alison Hume MP for Scarborough and Whitby gave an impassioned speech in the debate, in which she told how her own work had been taken without her consent to train AI and how theft of writers’ work was taking place on an “industrial scale”.
She added: “I know that creatives are worried because the scraping is happening now and will carry on until we have a solution. We must protect the creative industries… They are a glorious British success story. They make us proud. They make us feel good.” She went on to praise the 2.4 million-strong creative workforce, “Writers, musicians, photographers – all manner of wonderful creative folk powering one of our greatest success stories and one of our best engines for growth.”
WGGB member @MsAlisonHume speaking in the Commons this afternoon on the Data Bill and how #AI is leading to theft on “an industrial scale” of #writers‘ work pic.twitter.com/T9YZ8L7e4k
— The Writers’ Guild (@TheWritersGuild) February 12, 2025