Publishers’ Licensing Services and Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society create ‘pioneering’ AI licence

The two collective management organisations representing publishers and authors have agreed to the development by the Copyright Licensing Agency

CLA is the UK's Reproduction Rights Organisation. It is responsible for looking after the interests of rights owners over the copying of books, journals and periodicals. A non-profit making company, it is owned by its members, the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society and the Publishers Licensing Society. www.cla.co.uk

The organisations dubbed the model "significant". They said: "The pioneering licence for the use of text in generative AI, such as in the training and fine-tuning of an AI language model or use in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), will be the first of its kind to be developed in the UK. The licence will provide the opportunity for rightsholders who are not in a position to negotiate direct licensing agreements with AI developers, to receive renumeration for the use of their works in generative AI models and applications while ensuring that their content is protected, and copyright is respected.

"The new collective licence will offer a cost-effective and convenient solution to AI developers who are required to obtain permission to use content to innovate and develop models."