Financial Times says: AI developers must legally license training data
Financial Times editors: The solution to AI’s copyright infringement problem is simple. Legally license the intellectual property used to train AI models.
Mar. 5, 2025 — Financial Times, one of the world’s most-respected financial news sources, has published an extraordinary editorial advocating a market-based solution to corporate tech’s ongoing copyright theft crisis.
The FT’s headline: “AI copyright wars need a market solution.”
The newspaper’s editorial board writes:
Generative AI models owe their capabilities, so far, to the reams of text, sounds, images and videos posted online. Much of this has been scraped without the consent of the original creators. Disagreements over how copyright laws apply to gen-AI training have also fomented protests and litigation battles around the world.
Model developers tend to argue that “fair use” exemptions, which allow the use of copyrighted material under specific conditions, for instance by researchers using short, cited excerpts, are applicable. Artists, musicians and the media strongly disagree. They allege that AI companies are breaching their rights to intellectual property protections, since they go beyond merely excerpting their data.
Against starmer’s surrender
British Prime Minister Kier Starmer has proposed scrapping the U.K.’s copyright protections, which date back to the first English-language copyright act, the Statute of Anne, adopted in 1710. Starmer would let tech corporations ignore copyright law and have free use of property that belongs to others. Apparently the PM believes this will magically turn Manchester and Birmingham into global leaders in AI development.
The Financial Times editors, who are not in the business of restraining capitalism, believe Starmer’s way is “a mistake.” The better way, they say, is to support the emergence of a market for the legal licensing of AI training data—something that is already happening in the United States, as the Transparency Coalition has been documenting for the past year.
The FT editors say:
There is a better way forward: supporting licensing markets. Remunerated consent between creators and AI companies gives content makers control over their copyright (it is opt-in by design) and compensation for their work, which incentivises their efforts. It also gives AI models sustained access to high-quality data, free from legal wrangling. Many creative businesses, including this newspaper, have already struck individual content licensing deals with AI companies. Moving from ad hoc deals to a broader market for training licenses is the next step. Governments can help by supporting industry-led transparency standards for how training data is used alongside the development of software to process and track licenses.
intellectual property is property
At TCAI we’re amazed it took the Financial Times this long to discover that intellectual property is property, but we’re glad to add their voice to our ongoing advocacy.
The use of illegally pirated data to train the world’s most powerful AI systems is an ongoing breach of the most basic tenet of property law: What’s mine is mine, and may not be used without my permission.
Imagine the Starmer Surrender applied to other industries. The U.K. might supercharge its automobile manufacturing sector by passing a law to allow Jaguar and Bentley to use stolen parts in its latest models. London could become a global hub for the chop shop trade.
Fortunately, cooler minds at the FT have stepped forward and given voice to right, reason, and common sense. It remains to be seen whether Starmer and Parliament will listen.
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