FINAL _OCTOBER 2025_Focus from the AOP - Flipbook - Page 7
A statement from leading organisations representing Visual Artists, Photographers,
Illustrators and Image Libraries on Artificial Intelligence and Copyright.
Our members include hundreds of thousands of professional visual artists, photographers,
and illustrators working in the UK and internationally whose creative, copyright protected
works have been unlawfully scraped and used for AI training without remuneration.
Whilst we recognise the developmental potential of AI innovations for the creative sector and
beyond, the fundamental principle that creators should receive fair attribution and
compensation for their contributions to AI development has not been upheld.
We believe that AI companies operating in the UK should be transparent, equitable and
respect creators' rights and economic interests.
Generative AI & Visual Works
Addressing Past Uses
Professional visual artists, photographers and illustrators have experienced a reduction in
commissions, opportunities and pay due to the competition of AI-generated content in the
marketplace. Meanwhile, these creators have not received financial compensation for the use
of their work to train the systems they are being substituted by.
Many past ingestions of creative works for AI model development likely infringed rights in
multiple countries. We seek retrospective settlement mechanisms where models trained on
unlicensed works are exploited. This is essential to restore trust and enable future
cooperation between the creative and AI sectors.
Transparency Requirements
Many generative AI models do not declare what works they have used for training, which is a
barrier to achieving compensation for creators’ indispensable contribution to the AI value
chain.
Transparency measures are being developed in other territories, such as California, and
should be available to UK creators.
We call for comprehensive disclosures on the use of creative works in existing AI systems,
including:
•
What content was used: Clear documentation of works included in training datasets
•
How it was obtained: The methods and sources through which content was acquired
•
How it was used: The weight, relevance, and relationship of creative works to the
commercial value generated by AI systems
Fair compensation for value creation
We seek appropriate compensation for the unauthorised use of creative works in AI training.
While we acknowledge the complexities involved, including questions of valuation, distribution
mechanisms, and identifying rightsholders, we firmly believe existing copyright licensing
models can be replicated in the AI context, as it has done previously for many burgeoning
technologies and innovations.
Collective and transactional licensing schemes currently operated by collective management
organisations, individual artists and representative companies demonstrate that
