Artificial Intelligence | UK Regulatory Outlook May 2025

UK updates  

Data (Use and Access) Bill: Parliament continues to debate AI and copyright 

The Data (Use and Access) Bill entered the "ping pong" stage where both Houses of Parliament have to agree the wording of the bill for it to become law. AI has been the most contentious issue.

During the report stage, the House of Commons removed provisions on AI transparency, which had been added by the Lords, and which would require compliance with UK copyright law when content scraping from the internet, especially for AI purposes, and disclosure of the web crawlers used and of the sources of data used to train any AI models.

However, in an attempt to comfort the creative sector, the Commons added some provisions which would require the secretary of state to publish (i) an economic impact assessment of the four policy options in the government's consultation on copyright and AI (and, optionally, others if relevant), and (ii) a report on the use of copyright works in the development of AI systems, considering the same policy options. In particular, the report must make proposals in relation to:

• Technical measures and standards that may be used to control the use of copyright works to train AI systems and the accessing of copyright works for that purpose.
• The effect of copyright law on access to, and use of, third parties' data by developers of AI systems (for example, in text and data mining).
• The disclosure of information by AI developers about use of copyright works to develop AI systems, and how they access those works, such as by use of web crawlers.
• The granting of copyright licences for use in AI system development.

The assessment and report would have to consider the impact on both copyright owners and AI developers, and be published within 12 months of the bill becoming law.

On 12 May 2025, the bill returned to the Lords, who promptly voted to again add in transparency obligations. On 14 May, the Commons overturned the Lords' amendments. After some re-writing to try to address the Commons' objections, the House of Lords re-instated the AI/copyright transparency amendments, but the House of Commons again rejected them on 22 May.

The copyright transparency provisions are the final hurdle to passage of the bill. Parliament is now on holiday until 2 June, when the bill will be back in the Lords for their response to the Commons' latest rejection.

Children's Commissioner urges the government to ban AI apps enabling creation of sexually explicit deepfakes of children 

The Children's Commissioner has called on the government to ban apps that allow users to generate sexually explicit deepfakes of children using generative AI. The call is a part of the commissioner's report exploring nudification tools and technologies around them. The commissioner is also asking the government to: 

• Introduce specific legal requirements for developers of generative AI tools to screen their tools for nudifying risks to children and mitigate them.
• Provide children with effective ways to have sexually explicit deepfake images of them removed from the internet.
• Recognise deepfake sexual abuse as a form of violence against women and girls and take it seriously in law and policy. 

AI Growth Zones are open for application 

The government has launched a formal qualifying process for AI Growth Zones with applications welcome from regional and local authorities and industry, including data centre developers and energy firms.  

AI Growth Zones are areas with enhanced access to power and support for planning approvals to accelerate the build out of AI infrastructure in the UK. Applications for designation in summer 2025 must be submitted by the end of May 2025, after which the applications process will stay open indefinitely. 

Press regulator releases guidance on AI for journalists and publishers 

One of the UK's independent press regulators, Impress, has released new guidance for journalists and publishers on the ethical use of AI. Key points for publishers are: 

• Accuracy and sources: not to rely solely on AI tools for research purposes and to conduct human editorial review in order to ensure the accuracy of AI-generated content; not to use AI tools to create photorealistic images, videos or speech to depict real-life people or events.
• Attribution and plagiarism: to consider how to attribute the use of AI in an appropriate way, including clear labelling of AI-generated content; to be aware of the plagiarism risk when using AI tools.
• Discrimination: to be aware of AI's potential to create biased content.
• Privacy: not to input confidential, sensitive or commercial/proprietary information into AI tools unless using secure in-house systems with strict data protection measures.
• Transparency: be transparent about the use of AI, such as by including links to AI policies alongside links to privacy and other policies. 

EU updates  

EU AI Act: delay for the GPAI code of practice  

The European Commission missed its 2 May deadline to finalise the general-purpose AI (GPAI) code of practice, with the timeline now saying only that it will be ready at some point "from May 2025". With the GPAI provisions coming into effect on 2 August 2025, developers and users will be hoping that it is finalised quickly. 

EUIPO publishes report on generative AI and copyright 

The EU Intellectual Property Office has issued a report on the copyright issues relating to generative AI. The comprehensive report examines how copyright-protected content is used in training AI models, the applicable legal framework, how copyright owners can reserve their rights through opt-out mechanisms, and what technologies exist to mark or otherwise identify AI-generated outputs. 

The report also mentions protection for AI outputs, noting that "further reflections might also be needed on whether content generated by AI deserves protection through existing or new intellectual property rights." This is interesting because generally in EU countries, works generated solely by computers do not acquire copyright protection.