Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:

To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether his Department has made an estimate of the proportion of large artificial intelligence language models that are trained on datasets containing copyrighted material without licensing agreements.

Copying protected material in the UK will infringe copyright unless it is licensed, or an exception to copyright applies.

The Government recently consulted on several topics relating to the interaction between copyright and artificial intelligence (AI), including seeking evidence on the use of copyright material in AI model development and transparency on this.

This consultation closed on 25th February.

The Government’s priority now is to review all responses to the consultation, to help inform its next steps. The Government will continue to engage extensively on this issue and its proposals will be set out in due course.