The UK government is aiming to change laws on copyright and intellectual property (IP) to make it easier for machine learning systems to access and analyse data.
The government said that this would promote the use of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as wider data mining techniques, for the public good.
The proposed changes are a response to a government consultation on Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence.
They aim to provide anyone who already has lawful access to material that is protected by copyright to carry out data mining without having to seek any further permission from the owner of the copyright.
Data mining involves sifting large datasets for patterns, trends and other valuable information and can be used to train machine learning algorithms, among other uses.
One example highlighted in the government response is AI that has been trained on huge sets of computer code and is now able to suggest new code options to programmers.
Access to extensive datasets is crucial for many machine learning models and can help to improve their accuracy, as well as helping researchers to develop innovative new uses for the software.
The response said that the proposed changes are specifically targeted and will retain wider copyright protections.
Copyright holders will still have control over who can access their material, for example.
Law changes will benefit AI developers and researchers
The government said that the legislative changes will benefit a number of groups in the UK, including AI developers, researchers and even cultural heritage institutions.
The government added that the proposed changes took advantage of the UK’s ability to set its own copyright laws after leaving the EU and would make the UK’s copyright regime one of the most research and AI-friendly in the world.
David Prosser, executive director at Research Libraries UK, said that the UK is already a “global research powerhouse” and that researchers stood ready to make use of new data mining techniques.
The consultation also looked at how creative works and inventions created by AI systems should be protected via patent and copyright law – an issue that has created headlines around the world in recent years.
No changes to the existing laws are being proposed for now, though AI technical development in this area will be kept under review.
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