UK blinks on AI copyright carve-out after star-studded revolt

The UK government has reversed its preferred policy of allowing AI companies to scrape copyrighted content by default (with opt-out), following a high-profile backlash from creative figures including McCartney, Elton John, and Ian McKellen. Instead, it will pursue market-led licensing approaches and industry-developed transparency standards, with a Creative Content Exchange pilot platform launching this summer. This affects how foundation models can legally be trained in the UK, with potential downstream impact on AI tool quality and availability.