Artificial intelligence is reshaping how creative work is produced, used and valued, raising urgent questions about intellectual property, attribution, and the rights of those whose work is used to train AI systems.
For the UK screen sector, these questions are particularly pressing as the sector currently has no dedicated AI legislation, and existing copyright law leaves significant gaps, particularly around commercial use of third-party content in AI training.
Alma Economics was commissioned by the British Film Institute (BFI) to produce a position paper examining the existing codes of practice that guide the use of AI and its interaction with copyright and ethics in the screen sector. This is the first report delivered as part of READR, the BFI's Rapid Evidence Assessment and Data Reviews (READR) initiative, which commissions focused, policy-relevant research to guide the UK screen sector.
The research involved a detailed review of existing UK legal provisions, codes of practice, and governance frameworks, alongside nine stakeholder interviews with representatives from government, technology companies, AI developers, trade unions, and content creation companies. Emerging policy developments in international jurisdictions were also reviewed to draw on examples of best practice.
The research found that licensing of third-party screen content for generative AI training remains limited in the UK. The technical difficulty of identifying which content is being used in AI training (and attributing it to the relevant rightsholders) has created scepticism among rightsholders about licensing their content for AI use at all.
Transparency around training data and clearer attribution mechanisms were identified as the critical first steps for licensing to progress. Separately, generative AI is already being used within the screen sector to create or enhance audiovisual outputs using third-party content and personal data, with various codes of practice developed to help navigate the ethical and legal considerations involved.
The position paper includes an assessment framework analysing two key codes of practice in depth — the CoSTAR Time to ACCCT framework and DAACI's Attribution framework, which can be applied to future codes of practice relevant to the sector, providing a reusable tool as the regulatory landscape continues to evolve.
Read the full paper here
This report is the first in Alma's series of READR reports for the BFI. The second is a comprehensive review and mapping of screen sector data in the UK.
