United Kingdom: Data (Use and Access) Bill requiring inquiry into use of copyright works in development of AI systems was adopted by House of Lords

On 11 June 2025, the Data (Use and Access) Bill was adopted following its final agreement in the House of Lords. The Bill requires the Secretary of State to report to Parliament within six months on progress towards publishing the economic impact assessment and the artificial intelligence (AI) copyright report, unless both are already published. The Bill had undergone several amendments. The Lords initially proposed Amendment 49B, which would have required AI companies to publish detailed business data on copyrighted works used in training their models, including bot disclosure requirements and enforcement mechanisms to be introduced within 12 months. The Commons rejected this amendment, citing concerns about the financial burden on publicly funded institutions. In response, the Lords proposed a scaled-back version, Amendment 49D, which retained the transparency requirement but with fewer obligations. The amendment was rejected by the Commons for the same reasons. A third amendment, 49F, required the Secretary of State to make a parliamentary statement within three months on copyright infringement in AI development and to publish a draft bill outlining transparency requirements. The Commons dismissed the proposal as unnecessary and impractical. The Commons accepted a set of amendments. These included reducing the timeframe for economic impact assessments and reports from 12 to 9 months, introducing enforcement provisions for copyright protection in AI development with regulatory involvement, extending the scope to include AI systems developed outside the UK, and requiring a six-month progress statement on both the economic assessment and the copyright report.