Monday Morning Moan - why is the UK Intellectual Property Office more set on US AI interests than those of UK creatives? - Diginomica

As the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee’s Inquiry into AI and copyright was concluding – in person evidential sessions finished on 13 January – policymakers were just getting started on what promises to be a springtime for decision-making.

As we saw from my earlier reports, the UK Government’s spokespeople, Secretaries of State Lisa Nandy (DCMS) and Liz Kendall (DSIT), took the opportunity to say nothing of substance to the Lords’ Inquiry – after three years of inaction and PR blunders. But they did signal that a decision will appear in March.

So, what will that decision be? For the UK’s creative sectors, the signs are bad. Very bad.

A Westminster policy conference this month offered some instructive – if outrageous – insights into the government’s thinking on these issues. Unusually, it was a joint event from the Westminster Legal Policy Forum and the Westminster Media Forum, titled ‘The Future for Intellectual Property in the UK’.

I will focus on copyright here, as it remains the single most divisive and contentious issue – but only divisive in the sense of policymakers seeming to ignore what Britain wants. That includes the public, the media, Britain’s creative communities, and even the UK AI industry, whose views – expressed in a hard-hitting report last year, which urged the government to protect copyright – seem less important than those of US corporations.

But first a thematic scene-setter before we get to the nitty gritty. Adam Williams is CEO of the UK’s Intellectual Property Office (IPO), and he started his keynote by patting himself on the back:

You may have seen that the UK IPO was ranked first – or joint first with the EU IPO – as the most innovative IP office in the world. It's a great independent recognition of the work we do. But importantly, it wasn't just about the quantity of rights granted, but the wider role of stimulating growth in the economy!

For the record, UK growth increased by 0.3 percent in November 2025, after shrinking by 0.1 percent between August and October. The IPO’s contribution to that marginal growth? A matter of conjecture, given that GDP is measured by output, expenditure, and income. That said, the IMF has predicted that Britain’s economy might grow by as much as 1.3 percent in 2026. Good news, but as that hasn’t happened yet, the IPO can hardly claim credit.

Our mission isn't to produce more widgets – though I appreciate widgets are very important to certain parts of the beer industry – it's to help people grow the UK economy by providing an IP system that encourages investment in creativity and innovation. It's not just about the quantity of rights, as I've said before, it's about the quality of the ecosystem, how it supports start-ups, how it supports scale-ups, how it incentivizes commercialization, and how it enforces, or helps enforcement, of those rights.

Note who was missing from that list of who intellectual rights are supposed to protect, support, and assist: creators. Williams continued:

Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming creativity and raising profound questions around both the ownership and the originality of outputs.

I would argue it is ignoring concepts of ownership and originality, and one would hope that the CEO of the Intellectual Property Office would acknowledge that. But we live in strange times. Williams ploughed on:

Technology is accelerating, and it is leaping into new domains. And these trends aren't distant, they're shaping the decisions we need to make today, and so our challenge is clear. It's to build an IP framework that is agile, resilient, and ready for the future! But that's a challenge as a policymaker. It takes a long time to do policy work. It particularly takes a long time to do legislation, and we all know that technology and other advancements move much quicker.

In fact, government is perfectly capable of acting swiftly if it is minded to: witness the near-instant legislative response to the Grok issue (X’s AI allowed users to make nude images of women and children).

By contrast, the UK Government has sat on its hands for three years on enforcing copyright, despite overwhelming advice to act from its own public consultation, from the House of Lords’ earlier Inquiry into Large Language Models, from the UK’s media and its $160 billion creative communities, and even from UKAI, Britain’s trade organisation. All said the same thing: enforce copyright and stop letting US AI companies walk away with our ideas and content. The response? Tumbleweed.

In my view, the role of IP has changed significantly. It was once seen primarily as a means of legal protection with a primary focus on securing patents, registering your trademarks, and avoiding costly disputes. That's all still true, of course. But today, IP is seen as a much more strategic asset, one that is central to business growth and continued UK innovation. For me, the question has shifted from how do we safeguard this innovation to how do we leverage IP and drive the UK's competitive advantage? This evolution, for me, reflects a broader truth: IP is moving from being a risk management tool to a growth enabler. It now sits firmly on the agenda in C-suites. It sits firmly on the agenda in finance committees, and it shapes decisions that fuel innovation and prosperity.

Ahem, once again Mr Williams, any sign of the UK’s creative communities in that list? After all, for them IP is very much a means of safeguarding their innovation and their livelihoods. Yet apparently, they don’t even merit a pat on the back.

Next up was Matt Cope, the IPO’s Deputy Director of AI, Missions, and Technology, and he got straight to the point – unfortunately, for the UK’s artists and creatives.

The basic question, of course, is whether or not our current copyright framework is doing what we need it to in the face of new challenges arising from the training and deployment of AI models.

Who ‘we’ referred to in that statement was not explained, but we could infer it from what Cope said next:

AI development and adoption is an area of rapidly growing importance for our whole economy, including our creative sectors [finally a mention!]. And getting the rules right is important to make sure we can all benefit from the new opportunities that these tools offer. Between 2023 and 2024 the economic contribution of the UK's AI sector grew by 104 percent. That is about 23 times faster than the wider economy growth rate in the same period.

In case anyone at the IPO is interested, that is the same UK AI sector that opposed the government’s proposal to change copyright rules and opt creators into their works training AI systems. Trade organization UKAI described the plans as misguided, damaging, divisive, and unworkable in its report last Spring, after a lengthy consultation with the creative sectors. The government ignored that report.

The Government's approach to this issue can be summarized by three central principles. The first is that we think rightsholders should maintain meaningful control over the use of their works – that's part and parcel of copyright and what it means to have an IP framework. But we also recognize that AI developers need access to data so that they can use it lawfully and efficiently and at great scale to develop the models they're working on. And the third pillar is transparency.

OK. But then Cope really got to the point, and this is where you can almost hear the UK’s $160 billion creative sectors screaming – and understandably so. What he said over the next few minutes will be taken by many as staggering bad faith from a spokesman for, ahem, the Intellectual Property Office. Cope said:

As many of you will be aware, we published a consultation on this topic at the end of 2024 and when the consultation closed in early 2025, we found ourselves with over 11,500 responses to read through. This level of response is perhaps an indication of how important this topic is to many people, and we are hugely grateful for that level of engagement.

After a lengthy (and in this context, insulting) moan about how difficult it was to plough through all the responses, he continued:

The headline, which may you have seen, is that only three percent of people liked the government's preferred option, and 88% of people want stronger licensing in all cases. Now, these are really important messages, but they have to be understood in light of the fact that the vast majority of respondents were from the creative industries. Now, those opinions…. er, things… are vitally important, of course. But a consultation is about evidence and context, and we have to consider the findings in the round and what it means across the board.

Wait, what? Doesn’t 88% opposition count as evidence? But you read that right: the UK’s Intellectual Property Office is suggesting that, because many of the responses to the consultation were from the creative communities whose work has been harvested by AI vendors so they can create automated digital competitors, the IPO can, if not ignore them, then certainly give them a lot less weight.

Our consultation attracted a lot of responses. We had responses from creators, rightsholders, AI developers, academics, civil society groups, and many others. Every one of those responses has been read and analysed individually. Many of those responses were immensely thoughtful and detailed. But they only give us part of the picture.

So, let’s re-cap: UKAI, the very industry the UK Government claims to be helping, said government’s plans were a bad idea, and it should re-inforce copyright, not sacrifice it to the wishes of US corporations.

The House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee, having heard testimony from AI vendors, publishers, creative industry groups, copyright experts, and lawyers, said the same thing in its LLM Inquiry report last year.

The public agrees with UKAI and the Lords Committee. Britain’s media agree, and eighty-eight percent of respondents to the consultation agree – a diverse bunch, according to the IPO – with only three percent supporting the government’s preferred option.

But that is only part of the picture, says the Intellectual Property Office.

So, what is the missing part – the one that, apparently, is far too complex for Lords, lawyers, publishers, copyright experts, artists, media companies, and UK AI vendors to understand?

The answer of course, is the wishes of a handful of a number of super-powerful US technology corporations and their allies.

To add insult to injury, Cope added:

I think the most important piece of engagement is probably the expert-level technical working groups that we've been holding over the last few months. […] They've been meeting throughout November and December, and their work will directly inform the report and economic assessment which are due in March.

Critics of the government’s plans have largely been omitted from those working groups, of course. It’s a coalition of the willing – willing to ignore what Britain wants. So, the public consultation, the UK’s $160 billion creative sector, the Lords LLM Inquiry, the UKAI report? None of these are as important as those working groups, it seems. Staggering.

Christian Zimmermann is CEO of the Design and Artists Copyright Society (DACS). Clearly outraged by the IPO’s apparent betrayal, he said:

As per the Government’s Progress Report, eighty-eight percent of online submissions expressed support for licensing in all cases. So, as for the preference of the creative industries and the majority of all respondents, it is very clear what is wanted. So, I was very interested to hear what Matt said about these findings having to be put into a context of who responded to the consultation. This seems to be [saying] that it needs to be recognized that the wishes of a handful of powerful international corporations may outweigh what the majority of creators whose rights are affected are saying to government.

Current copyright law, in our opinion, gives creators an exclusive right to authorize the use of their works, but this has simply not been respected. And rather than helping to enforce these rights, the government is engaging in a protracted process to come up with a solution that satisfies the tech sector. So, this signals to us that if nothing is done to help creators protect and monetize their rights, then choosing a career in the creative industries is becoming less and less viable – with everything this brings with it: loss of diversity, creativity, and choice. We very much favour the Australian approach, where the government categorically ruled out the introduction of a TDM exception to benefit AI companies.

He summed up with a reality check:

The tech industry […] is basically dictating UK policy on AI and copyright.

That’s right. And even the IPO is not pretending otherwise.

But note, it is not the UK AI sector which is dictating that policy. Indeed, it made its feelings clear last year: UKAI supports UK creatives. So, what the hell does the government think it is doing?

This is pitiful stuff from a UK administration that has supped US vendors’ Kool-Aid and begged for more. Government by press release in the belief that growth will magically appear if No 10 just does what it is told. How embarrassing. And how tragic.