Penguin Random House UK Response to Government Consultation on Copyright and AI

To whom it may concern:

Penguin Random House is the world’s leading global publisher. In the UK, we employ 2,000 colleagues, publish 1,500 new titles annually, and sell well above 100 million books in all formats every year. We have the largest and most diverse catalogue, which includes the world-renowned Penguin Classics, and the broadest reach of any trade publisher in the world.

Our mission is to make books for everyone inspired by the vision of Penguin’s founder Allen Lane, who launched the first ten Penguin paperbacks in 1935, to make quality books available to the widest possible audience. Ninety years later, we’re proud of our heritage and track record of bringing to life a vibrant range of classic, bestselling and new voices through our books. The impact of that publishing is hard to quantify but it is undeniable that the cultural, social and economic contribution has been significant, at both a societal and individual level.

Book publishing has successfully embraced several technological innovations and throughout the demand for books has endured. Unlike many other media verticals, book publishing has a healthy co-existence of physical and digital formats. We are confident that this demand, while it may come from different avenues (Booktok is a significant discovery channel that did not exist a few years ago, for example), will continue for many years to come.

This ongoing commercial, social and cultural success is dependent on having the right regulatory conditions in place. The UK’s gold standard copyright regime has been essential by recognising and protecting the fundamental value of human creativity, upon which our sector is predicated, and ensuring that it is rewarded and incentivised for the future. This has enabled book publishers and the wider UK creative industry to be growth drivers for the UK economy and innovative leaders on the world stage.

Our approach to Generative AI

At Penguin Random House UK, we’ve been using AI of one kind or another for a decade or more. Our data science teams, for example, have been developing machine learning tools for sales forecasting and stock management.

More recently, as the technology develops at pace, we have set out some principles to guide our approach to the responsible use of Generative AI at Penguin Random House UK.

First principle: we champion human creativity. We seek out and enable talented people from all walks of life to tell their stories, and make sure they are heard by the widest possible audience. We do not see any technology as a substitute for human imagination.

Second principle: we must advocate for intellectual property. We are a major investor in human creativity, and our investment – together with our authors’ – rests on a basic principle – that as a society we value creative work and have mechanisms to reward it. We will vigorously defend the intellectual property that belongs to our authors and artists.

Third principle: we will innovate responsibly. We have a long track record as an innovator in the publishing industry, and we will use generative AI tools selectively and responsibly, where we see a clear case that they can advance our goals.

Government consultation on Copyright and AI

We believe it is possible to reconcile the development of AI with continuing to uphold the UK’s gold standard copyright regime and it is in that spirit in which we are writing to submit to the Government Consultation.

•   We support and endorse the stance and the detailed submission in the Publishers Association's response into which we have inputted.

•   In particular we support the core principles within that submission:

– The law on copyright is clear and the developing market in licensing AI content shows there is no market failure mandating the introduction of a copyright exception for the purpose of training AI.

– Transparency is critical: clear and effective transparency measures are needed to unlock and encourage further licensing deals, backed up by genuine enforceability.

– The principle that rightsholders should decide when, how and where their work is used and be fairly compensated for that holds good and does not need to be reversed in the way the government’s preferred Option 3 envisages i.e. with the automatic right for AI developers to use copyright work to data mine for commercial purposes unless the rightsholders opt out/reserve their rights.

– “Opt out” doesn’t currently work technically or practically. For example, the EU DSM Directive exception and opt out was designed for content extraction not content creation, and in practice it has proved unworkable in the context of data mining by AI companies. As a result, content has been and continues to be scraped at scale, including from pirate sites, and used to train AI models without permission or payment.

– We are reassured that the government has said that it will not implement its preferred package unless and until there is a workable “opt out”. And we agree with the government that Option 2, the broad data mining exception, is “highly likely to constrain the growth of the creative and media sectors” and therefore we also reject it.

– Existing rules that focus on the ‘human’ element of creativity are sufficient to determine the copyright vested in AI output and we agree with the government that s.9(3) CDPA1988 should be removed.

Conclusion

As publishers, we are proud to be custodians of one of the greatest inventions – the book, which has endured for centuries. We write from a position of belief that creativity and innovation are not in opposition to one another but rather connected and complementary.

We are at a critical juncture. This Government has a unique opportunity to set the conditions to protect, support and grow the creative and tech sectors in tandem. We believe it is possible – indeed, necessary – for copyright protection to be the fundamental underpinning whereby rights holders continue to have protection and recognition, which would support a pipeline of quality content to fuel AI development and drive growth across both sectors.

Tom Weldon, CEO of Penguin Random House UK
25th February 2025