Quarterly BAS Due (July–September)
Form 1099-NEC & Contractor Payment Reporting Check
Why this matters.
Most UK businesses now use tools like ChatGPT, Copilot, Midjourney or Gemini to draft marketing copy, product descriptions, blog posts, logos or social content — but few have checked whether that content is actually protected, or whether creating it has exposed them to risk. UK copyright law (the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988) was not written with generative AI in mind: section 9(3) grants authorship of a “computer-generated work” to the person who made the arrangements for it to be created, but courts and IPO guidance have left real doubt over whether purely AI-generated output qualifies for copyright protection at all, and how much human input is needed to secure it. Following the government’s 2024–25 consultation on AI and copyright, the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 committed ministers to publish a report on copyright and AI, with further legislation expected — meaning the rules businesses are working to today may shift again soon.
Two risks sit on top of the ownership question. First, inadvertent infringement: generative tools are trained on vast datasets that can include copyrighted material, and outputs can closely mirror existing work, exposing a business that publishes it commercially. Second, transparency: the Advertising Standards Authority and platforms increasingly expect AI-generated or AI-assisted marketing content, images and influencer posts to be identifiable as such, and many AI tool providers’ own terms restrict commercial use, require attribution, or deny any ownership transfer at all. A business that hasn’t reviewed its AI tool contracts and content workflow may find it can’t stop a competitor copying “its” AI-written website, or that it has unknowingly published something it never had the right to use.
