New UK report finds tech companies’ economic modelling defective

March 11, 2026

The report, entitled Economic and policy review of three reports on copyright and AI, critiques economic modelling in three reports published by proponents of a text and data mining (TDM) exception for commercial AI development in the UK.

The report highlights that the tech companies’ modelling:

wrongly assumes that copyright is the main constraint on AI growth, rather than skills shortages, compute capacity, infrastructure, energy and land
fails to assess the impact of a TDM exception on UK’s creative industry sector, a significant contributor to the UK economy
ignores the rapidly growing market for licensing content for AI training and grounding
does not demonstrate any market failure that would warrant government intervention under the