The UK drops its AI copyright opt-out plan, and the same idea turns up in Australia

On 18 March 2026 the UK government published its report on copyright and AI. It dropped the plan musicians had spent more than a year fighting. A broad copyright exception letting AI developers train on any work whose owner hadn't opted out, the option the government favoured when it consulted, is in the report's words "no longer the government's preferred way forward".

It didn't pick anything in its place. The report says there is "no consensus" on how to meet its goals, calls the evidence on how copyright affects AI development in the UK "limited and uncertain", and says it won't change copyright law until it is confident the change will work. For now it does not propose stepping into the licensing market. Instead it says it will work with industry on transparency about training data and on labelling AI-generated content, look at a possible new right over digital replicas of a person's voice or likeness, and propose ending protection for wholly computer-generated works while keeping it for AI-assisted ones.

How big was the rejection?

The consultation drew 11,520 responses. Counting both online and emailed answers to the question on preferred options, 3% backed the opt-out exception and 81% preferred strengthening copyright so that licences are needed in every case, the report says. It quotes UK Music's line that consent "must be obtained, never assumed". It also gives a music example of what a narrower exception would not cover: copying songs to build a model that makes music competing with the people who wrote them.

How artists won this round

The result came from pressure on several fronts, and the record shows each one.

Visible, collective protest. In February 2025 more than 1,000 musicians released Is This What We Want?, an album of recordings of empty studios and performance spaces. Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn and Hans Zimmer were among them. The campaign site says it reached no. 38 in the UK album chart, and all profits go to the charity Help Musicians. NME reports that Paul McCartney, Dua Lipa, Elton John and Kate Bush led the wider campaign, alongside an open letter signed by hundreds of artists.

Votes in Parliament. In May and June 2025 the House of Lords voted against the government four times on Baroness Kidron's amendments to the Data (Use and Access) Bill. The amendments were about transparency: making AI firms disclose the copyrighted material their models are trained on. The margins, from Parliament's own division records: 272 to 125 on 12 May, 289 to 118 on 19 May, 242 to 116 on 2 June and 221 to 116 on 4 June.

A legal deadline. The Act that passed requires the government to publish a report on copyright and AI within nine months, covering the consultation options, transparency, licensing and enforcement, and taking account of consultation responses (section 136). The 18 March report was laid under that section. In our reading, the lasting gain from that fight was a fixed date by which ministers had to answer the 11,520 responses in public.

Not over in the UK

The industry welcomed the change but isn't treating it as settled. UK Music chief executive Tom Kiehl urged ministers to rule out bringing the plan back for as long as they are in office, according to NME. The Ivors Academy said avoiding the worst outcome was only a first step. The Featured Artist Coalition wants reform built on consent, transparency and fair pay. Those groups are right to stay wary: "no preferred option" leaves the door open.

Artists online were less polite. Two posts on X we were pointed to make points we hear often: one asks why creators should have to opt out at all, since silence isn't consent (post). The other says Britain's creators beat opt-out and are now warning Canberra (post). X wouldn't load either post for us when we went to re-check them, so treat these as summaries, not quotes. Beyond organised bodies and well-known names, we found little evidence of how working musicians reacted.

The fight moves to Australia

Australia is where opt-out is now in play. Music Business Worldwide reports that the government ruled out a text and data mining exception in October 2025. But a leaked government consultation document, first reported by the ABC in September, sets out two options, both based on opt-out. In one, AI firms could train on anything not opted out if they pay a central body or license through collecting societies. In the other, deals with a minimum number of rightsholders would be enough, and nobody outside those deals would be paid. The International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP) says that of 62 countries that have looked at the question, Australia alone is considering weakening protection. That count is ICMP's and we haven't checked it. We cover ICMP's warning in a separate post. We couldn't open the ABC's original report, so the Australian details here rest on MBW's account of it.

What we think

Opt-out sounds like a compromise but works like a transfer. It moves the paperwork from companies with legal teams to the people with the least time: a songwriter with a day job, a session player with a back catalogue spread across five distributors. Without transparency, it is close to meaningless anyway, because you can't enforce an opt-out if you can't find out what a model was trained on. That's why the Lords votes were about transparency. The government's plan to handle transparency through industry best practice, rather than law, is the real unfinished business.

The Australian leak shows the next form this takes: opt-out with payment attached, which is easier to sell as a licensing scheme. Judge it by the default, not the label. If silence still counts as permission, it is the UK plan again with a fee on top. And the second option, where deals with a few big rightsholders unlock everyone else's work, would leave independent artists with nothing.

The UK campaign gives other countries a template, and copying it doesn't need celebrities alone. It used a public act that made the stakes concrete (the silent album), sympathetic legislators willing to vote repeatedly, and a mass consultation response that the government then had to report on by law. Artists outside the UK should respond to their own consultations individually. A 3% figure only exists because thousands of people filled in a form. They should also push for the next fix to come with a deadline written into law, because a promise to "gather evidence" has no date.