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6 March 2026
Welcoming the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee report on AI and copyright published today, News Media Association chief executive Owen Meredith said: “More than a year after the Government floated unworkable opt out proposals – now rightly abandoned – jurisdictions around the globe have moved decisively to protect their sovereign data assets.
“At the same time, AI companies have recognised a simple truth: access to new, high quality journalism is indispensable to training and grounding their models, and have begun to licence trusted journalistic content.
“This Report is right to conclude that the Government must decisively rule out any copyright exception, including for so called ‘commercial research’. Prolonged Government-generated uncertainty has been exploited by AI firms and has chilled the licensing market for UK content. There is one swift, simple step the Government can take to unlock growth in UK intellectual property: publicly rule out changes to copyright law and allow the market to scale at pace.”