The UK shelved its favored AI copyright exception, for now

The system

A UK session musician whose track ends up in a scraped web dataset has had no clear answer, under UK law, about whether that use required permission. The UK Intellectual Property Office, working with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, opened the formal consultation Copyright and Artificial Intelligence on 17 December 2024, running ten weeks to 25 February 2025. It sought views on text-and-data-mining exceptions, transparency measures, and licensing for AI training, alongside separate questions on computer-generated works and digital replicas.

What the documents establish

The consultation document set out four options: no change, a licensing requirement in all cases, a broad data-mining exception with no opt-out, and a data-mining exception with an opt-out plus transparency measures, the last being the government's stated preference at consultation stage. The government's Report and impact assessment on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, published 18 March 2026 under sections 135 and 136 of the Data (Use and Access) Act, records that most respondents rejected that preferred option: creative-industry respondents feared an opt-out would be impractical and would let generative AI use their work without compensation, while some AI developers argued it would make the UK less competitive than looser regimes elsewhere. The report's full analysis states plainly that 'a broad copyright exception with opt-out is no longer the government's preferred way forward.' The government instead commits to gathering further evidence and engaging stakeholders before proposing new legislation, rather than adopting any of the four original options now.

Craft and rights

For UK rights holders, the practical effect of two years of consultation is that the underlying legal uncertainty about text-and-data-mining for AI training has not been resolved by statute; the status quo the report describes continues while the government builds its evidence base. Musicians negotiating licenses with AI developers cannot yet point to a UK-specific exception, in either direction, that changes what a license needs to cover. This is an editorial read: the reversal suggests rights-holder lobbying was more effective than technology-sector lobbying at consultation stage, but it also means UK policy on this question is now openly unsettled rather than resolved either way.

Outcomes and open questions

The report commits to further evidence-gathering and stakeholder engagement rather than a legislative timetable, and separately notes the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee's own inquiry as a factor the government says it will weigh. Whether, and when, any new option reaches a bill remains open.

• Has your licensing or opt-out approach assumed a UK exception that the government has now stepped back from proposing?
• What would a licensing-first approach, rather than an exception, mean for your catalogue's negotiating position?
• Are you tracking the House of Lords committee's findings the government says it will consider?

A consultation that ends by ruling out its own preferred option is not a dead end so much as a return to the drawing board, and UK rights holders should read this report as the start of the next round, not the answer to the first.