The UK Prime Minister believes that new laws will help publishers combat unapproved AI data scraping

Since the World Wide Web has become a household name, print media companies and online publishers have been in a one-sided competition for readers and revenue. Both are now facing the rise in generative AI that is scaping their data for training, usually without consent or remuneration. The UK prime minister wants legislation to regulate competition in the digital marketplace to "rebalance" the relationship between online platforms, publishers and AI.

Kier Starmer is the boss of Blighty. He made this statement in a short article on The Guardian. He began by making some harsh comments about modern journalism and democracy. He was more interested in AI and market legislation.

"Both artificial Intelligence and the Creative Industries--which includes news media- are central to this Government's driving mission on Economic Growth," he noted. He made it clear that he was not against the use AI.

"To achieve balance in our industrial policies, we work closely with these sectors." We acknowledge the basic principle that publishers must have control and be paid for their work. This is true even when considering the role of AI.

You might be wondering exactly what he means by publishers having control over their work and being paid for it. They are already paid through subscriptions, paper fees, and advertising revenue.

Starmer may not have stated this explicitly, but I'm fairly certain he's talking about AI companies scraping content from the web to train their models. The media company has no control over the use of that data and is not paid for it until it has been approved.

The UK government wants new regulations to counter this. According to the Prime Minister, "[t]his groundbreaking legislation will help rebalance relationships between online platforms and those who rely on these platforms, such as publishers."

The UK government has proposed a new regulation, simply called the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (2024) (warning: huge webpage), that focuses on improving consumer rights and clampingdown unfair practices, like fake reviews and hidden charges. It also includes changes related digital markets.

These will allow UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to grant specific technology companies a "strategic status", which would subject them to special codes, competition interventions, and additional regulations about mergers and other things.

I suspect that it's the interventions part that would come into effect here, regarding AI data scraping, as the legislation states that "The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) may make a pro-competition intervention...[after] following a PCI investigation, the CMA considers that a factor or combination of factors relating to a relevant digital activity is having an adverse effect on competition."

While I would prefer to see laws that could be used to punish AI companies for using published content with out consent, I do think that some laws can be used to do so.

It's important to do something because generative AI won't be going away anytime soon, or at least, not while billions of dollars-pounds are being invested.