How UK Artists Blocked Free AI Use of Their Work
The UK government dumped its plan to let AI companies train on copyrighted work without permission. Actors, musicians and writers welcomed the backdown after a 15-month fight over who gets paid when creative work trains a model. The Guardian
The opposition was coordinated and high profile. Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Björn Ulvaeus, Julianne Moore and Thom Yorke were among those who signed letters and joined protests. John called the government "absolute losers" over the plans and said they would "rob young people of their legacy and their income".
The parliamentary campaign was run by Beeban Kidron, a member of the UK upper house and an award-winning film director. She pushed legislative amendments and helped organise the celebrity opposition.
Ed Newton-Rex organised the protest stunts. He is a composer and former AI executive. The protest album 'Is This What We Want?' used recordings of empty music studios and performance spaces and was backed by more than 1,000 musicians including Damon Albarn, Kate Bush and Annie Lennox. The protest book 'Don’t Steal This Book' was an otherwise empty paperback listing the names of 10,000 writers including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory and Richard Osman.
The campaign built over months. In October 2024, Thom Yorke and Julianne Moore joined thousands of creatives in warning that unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to livelihoods. By March 2026, actors, musicians and writers were welcoming the backdown. The Guardian
What London actually proposed
The UK government consulted on a new exception to copyright law for "text and data mining", the technical term for copying large amounts of material so computers can analyse it. Think of it as bulk photocopying for machine learning. The Copyright and Artificial Intelligence consultation, published on 17 December 2024, asked how the UK legal rules for AI and copyright support UK creative industries. UK Government
Four options were on the table, including do nothing and strengthening copyright. The flashpoint was option 2, described by the government as a broad data mining exception with no opt-out that would allow data mining of copyright works including for AI. UK Government
Members of the upper house pushed back. A UK upper-house committee said Britain should reject letting AI companies freely mine copyrighted material for commercial model training and should back a licensing-first approach, where AI firms must seek deals before they train. British technology minister Liz Kendall said the government was seeking a "reset" on plans to overhaul copyright rules in the battle between AI and creators. Reuters Reuters
The dispute also touched competition rules. The UK competition regulator imposed new competition requirements on Google Search requiring Google to let UK publishers opt out of AI search. The government later published a Copyright and Artificial Intelligence statement of progress under Section 137 of the Data (Use and Access) Act. Polling in the UK found seven out of 10 adults supported payment of royalties to copyright holders whose work had been used to train AI models.
Ministers walked away from the blanket exception.
Why Canberra is watching
Australia has its own process under way. Australia has a Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Reference Group (CAIRG). On 26 October 2025 the Albanese Government announced measures to ensure Australia is prepared for future copyright challenges from emerging AI. Australia's Productivity Commission proposes fair dealing for text and data mining. The Australian Attorney-General announced that the government is not considering a text and data mining exception in Australian copyright law.
Kidron has a direct warning for that process. She warned Prime Minister Anthony Albanese not to "sell Australian creatives down the river" on AI copyright and said he should not squander his reputation for standing up to tech.
The broader context here is leverage, not sentiment. Departments test the edges. Ministers keep their options open. London showed creators can win if they combine three things: amendments that create legislative pain, public polling that gives ministers cover to retreat, and celebrity voices that journalists actually ring back. Kidron supplied the first. Seven-in-ten support for royalties supplied the second. Elton and McCartney supplied the third.
In my view, the lesson for Australian creators and tech lobbyists is narrower than the slogans suggest. The UK did not settle how licensing at scale would function, what a workable opt-out looks like, or what ratecard applies to training data. It settled that a no-permission, no-pay exception was politically unsaleable. That leaves the hard policy design still to do, in London and in Canberra.
Looking at what this means for the Albanese government, the risk is familiar. Do the quiet consultation, float an efficiency reform, and discover too late that the politics belong to someone else. Kidron's intervention is an early marker. She is telling Labor that the UK playbook travels, and that Australian artists can replicate the studios-and-empty-book theatre in Martin Place if they must. Smart ministers will engage CAIRG and the rights holders before the draft lands, not after the letters pages fill up.
