Google demands changes to AI copyright laws

Yahoo Finance ·

Google demands changes to AI copyright laws Hans van Leeuwen Tue, 30 June 2026 at 3:01 am GMT-4 3 min read GOOGL Google has renewed its campaign for ministers to relax AI copyright laws, claiming a failure to do so will harm the economy. The tech giant has urged the Government to change the law so that start-ups in fields such as fintech or bioscience can scrape the web's free trove of data to "train" their AI applications, known as large language models (LLMs). "When any company is building a data centre here, or indeed building an AI company here, the moment they want to train those LLMs, they have to go to a different jurisdiction," said Katie O'Donovan, Google's UK head of public policy. This "puts a ceiling on the sophistication of our [British] AI economy ... That investment, that capacity, goes elsewhere". She added: "You start to think, increasingly, about how does the UK want to have an AI economy, in this quite competitive global environment?" While couched as a recommendation to support the broader AI economy, the changes sought would benefit Google, which has a substantial AI business. Google's renewed public pressure comes after the Government in March abandoned its latest attempt to find a way to allow technology giants to scrape the web to develop their AI products, following a backlash from artists, writers and musicians. The training process involves AI companies harvesting publicly available data from the web, which are used to programme the model. This can include material protected by copyright. The cultural industries have strongly resisted the big-tech companies' push for unfettered access to the web, saying this contravenes their rights as creators of the material. The Government initially proposed that artists could "opt out" of having their work included in AI training. But the sector campaigned against this, drawing in high-profile figures such as Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Elton John. Ministers then suggested that tech firms could continue using copyrighted material to develop their bots, but only for scientific or research purposes. If a firm then used its AI for a commercial purpose, it would have to seek a licence from rights-holders. Ms O'Donovan warned that this proposal was "prohibitive" for companies wanting to build new technology in the UK. "You'd have to be pretty bold to interpret what 'research purposes' means," she said. She added that almost anyone designing an AI tool would be looking at a commercial application. "If you're spinning out from a UK university, or you're choosing, for whatever reason, to build your business here, it just adds a great deal of business complexity," she said. Ms O'Donovan warned that even if Britain offered copyright protection, it would not be universal because a lot of UK-published material is available for developing AI in the US anyway. She said Google had created a system where publishers can keep their output on the web but decline to have it used in training AI. Google has faced the ire of the media industry for adding prominent AI overviews to the top of search results, prompting internet users to read its answers without clicking through to any articles or websites. Publishers have complained of a sharp drop-off in search traffic as a result of the changes. A government spokesman pointed to a statement by Liz Kendall, the Technology Secretary, from March, stating that the Government "no longer has a preferred option" on AI copyright and that the UK would only act "in line with our own interests and values". The spokesman said: "Copyright laws must protect the UK's position as a creative powerhouse while unlocking the extraordinary potential of AI-driven innovation. "We are doing the work that's required to get the right outcomes so both the creative and technical sectors can flourish in this country."

DYAX Investor Sentiment

Bullish (Long) 42% · Bearish (Short) 58%

478 participants

Related News

원문 보기 — Yahoo Finance