Workplace AI permissions

New permissions added to the CLA licences sold to businesses and many public sector organisations, which a number of members receive income from, will include the ability for organisations to use licensed works as ‘prompts’ when using certain Generative AI tools in the workplace. 

The updated licences, which we discussed at our AGM last year, and in this blog post, will be launched on 1 May.

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 opted in?  

No, not all titles will be ‘opted in’ to these licences. From 1 May, 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 opted in by your publisher, the following message will appear:

If your work hasn’t been opted in 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.

ALCS will be developing a tool to allow members to inform us of choices around your works and we’ll keep you updated as to when this will be available.

Training licence in development

Separately, we have agreed, alongside the Publishers’ Licensing Services, for the CLA to begin the development of a licence for the training of generative AI systems. 

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). 

The licence will provide the opportunity for rightsholders who are not in a position to negotiate direct licensing agreements with AI developers, to receive renumeration for the use of their works in generative AI models and applications whilst ensuring that their content is protected, and copyright is respected. 

The CLA plans to launch this licence in the third quarter of 2025. 

Chief Executive Barbara Hayes said: “When we surveyed our members last year, they made it clear that they expect us to do something about their works being used to train AI. The Government proposal to introduce a copyright exception would give very limited choice, wouldn’t remunerate creators or provide any transparency about which works are being used, and so we’re pleased to be working with our partners at PLS and CLA to develop a licence that would deliver on these terms for writers and demonstrate that licensing is a viable and practical solution.”