During the Lords Select Committee Inquiry into AI and copyright, the committee approached Hayleigh Bosher with some specific questions they wanted her insight on, which was then cited 20 times in the final report.
Dr Hayleigh Bosher is a Reader (Associate Professor) in Intellectual Property Law at Brunel University of London. She is particularly known for her expertise in copyright law and policy in the creative industries.
The questions the committee asked her to address were:
- To what extent is it clear under existing UK copyright law whether and when the use of protected works for training AI models is lawful? Are there particular areas (for example around text and data mining or temporary copies) where you see significant uncertainty?
- How would you describe the main stages or processes through which generative AI systems use data (i.e. from initial data collection, through training, to the generation of outputs)? At which points in those processes do you think copyright is most clearly engaged, and how?
- To what degree is it accepted that some copying of data (including temporary and intermediate copies) is unavoidable in training and operating a generative AI model?
- To what degree is it a settled view that, once trained, a model does not store “copies” of individual works but instead stores numerical parameters? Does this characterisation matter for copyright analysis, particularly where models can sometimes reproduce text or images from their training data verbatim or near-verbatim?
- Some stakeholders argue that training AI models on copyrighted works is analogous to humans reading and learning from those works and therefore should not be treated as infringement. From the standpoint of UK copyright law, is this analogy persuasive or misleading?
- Within UK law, how far can existing exceptions realistically be interpreted to cover large-scale training and inference-time retrieval?
- Why are outputs “in the style” of a named creator and digital replicas difficult to address under the current UK copyright regime?
- In the UK and in other jurisdictions, what is usually meant by “image rights” or “personality rights” and how do they interact with copyright and neighbouring rights?
In her response, Dr Bosher states that current UK copyright law does not allow for training commercial AI models with copyrighted materials without permission, and counters several narratives that have attempted to justify this use. She also draws attention to areas where further legislation may be necessary to protect creators and personalities against ‘deepfakes’.
See her full written evidence here (published 2nd March 2026)
Committee Report
The final committee report drew heavily on Dr Bosher’s written evidence, especially her reasoning for viewing training of AI models on copyrighted materials as being copyright infringements under current UK law, and areas such as AI impersonating a personality that may need new legislation.
See the full committee report here (published 6th March 2026)