AI licences
The licensing options currently in place or in development for ALCS members are:
Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) Generative AI Solution
This will be a licence for the training of generative AI systems. This licence is still in development (as of March 2026) and will operated on an opt-in basis for rightsholders. The focus will be on professional content in areas like business and academia as we seek to test and learn with this new type of licensing.
The licence will cover the use of text in generative AI, such as in the training and fine-tuning of an AI language model or use in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). RAG enables the AI systems to verify the content of outputs (responses to user queries) using authoritative data, such as published material, which can be cited in the responses.
The licence will provide the opportunity for rightsholders who are not in a position to negotiate direct licensing agreements with AI developers, to receive remuneration for the use of their works in generative AI models and applications whilst ensuring that their content is protected, and copyright is respected.
ALCS members who hold the relevant rights in works implicated in these licences will be invited to participate by setting their preferences on an individual work level for this licence. Members will be able to do this within the members’ area of the ALCS website.
If you have any questions about the licence and what it could mean for you, please contact communications@alcs.co.uk.
Workplace AI permissions
On 1 May 2025, CLA added additional permissions to the CLA licences that are sold to businesses and many public sector organisations, which a number of members receive income from, to include the ability for organisations to use licensed works as ‘prompts’ when using certain Generative AI tools in the workplace.
The licences cover existing and increasingly commonplace activities in the workplace where individuals use the available technology to analyse and extract information from works, for example by summarising the key points within an academic journal article. These licences do not cover the use of works for training generative AI systems.
Who is impacted?
The changes to these licence terms will impact members who write books and articles and receive title specific income from CLA from the commercial and public sector licences, which will appear as one of the following on your statement:
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd/Code No./United Kingdom/Photocopying/Business/Date
Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd/Code No./United Kingdom/Photocopying/Government/Date
How much will I receive?
The levels of compensation members will receive will depend on usage, but members who regularly receive money from these sectors, should see an uplift in fees in future distributions.
Are all titles included?
No, not all titles are included in these licences. You can find out if your works are included by using the CLA check permissions tool. You can do that here by entering your ISBN or the ISSN of the publication you write for and selecting the ‘Business’ licence from the dropdown options.
If your work has been included by your publisher, the following message will appear:
If your work hasn’t been included by your publisher, no message will appear.
If your work is included, and you’d like it excluded from this element of the CLA licensing scheme, then please contact us at communications@alcs.co.uk to let us know.
