Invitation to Democratic AI Series #2 | 15 March 2025
Citizens’ Alternative: AI & Copyright Deliberation with Democratic AI Tools
Dear readers,
We’re excited to announce that our popular Democratic AI series is returning for the second workshop—Tools in Action: Enhancing Group Deliberation.
This time, we’d like to invite you to join us for an afternoon of deliberation on the hotly debated UK approach to AI & Copyright while trying out three democratic AI tools by Polis, Harmonica, and Dembrane.
Event Details:
🗓️ Saturday, 15 March 2025
🕐 1:30 to 4:30 PM (GMT)
📍 Newspeak House (133-135 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 7DG)
Spaces are limited, so register now!
About Democratic AI Tools
Democratic AI tools broadly refer to AI technologies developed to enhance our democratic society and foster civic engagement in democratic deliberations. They can be tools designed to facilitate group conversations, elicit insights with smart polling, surface group preferences, or support collective decisionmaking.
Our first Democratic AI workshop in January 2025 featured the Habermas Machine developed by Google DeepMind researchers Michiel Bakker and MH Tessler and saw almost 100 participants deliberating in real time!
In our second workshop, we curated a list of democratic AI tools that assist humans in deliberations as opposed to replacing humans as mediators or facilitators. You will have a chance to experiment with three tools integrated into different steps of the deliberation exercise to learn about their respective strengths.
Polis: Discover how this algorithmic platform effectively maps diverse opinion landscapes and ensures all voices are heard
Dembrane: Participate in AI-assisted collective sensemaking that captures insights automatically—no notetaking required!
Harmonica: Experience how AI can help your group find consensus through decentralized conversation
About the Theme: Citizens’ Alternative to the UK’s AI & Copyright Approach
The second workshop features a two-hour deliberation exercise that allows participants to truly experience democratic AI tools in action on a hotly debated topic in 2025: the UK government’s approach to AI & copyright.
On 17 December 2024, the UK government launched an open consultation on their approach to reconcile the UK copyright regime’s protection for creatives’ intellectual work and the burgeoning AI sector’s demand for training data for their models.
On the creatives’ side, much of their work has already been taken by the AI developers (sometimes sold through the rights holders) as training data for models with neither their explicit consent nor knowledge. Struggling to control how their work is being used, the creatives and rights holders question the validity of the ‘fair use/dealing’ argument AI developers use as armor and demand remuneration for their work.
On the developers’ side, the debate seems inconsequential given that the UK copyright law doesn’t have far-reaching effects beyond UK’s borders—meaning that making the UK copyright law more stringent than it is will only hinder UK developers’ ability to source high-quality training data, disadvantaging them compared to developers elsewhere. Enforcing UK copyright law vis-a-vis the materials’ usage in AI training doesn’t sufficiently protect UK creatives; instead, it only harms UK’s AI development.
The government proposed a few options and asked the public for their opinions: Should the UK government…
Leave the situation as is.
Require AI companies to seek licenses for using copyrighted work.
Introduce an exception to copyright law for text and data mining, while allowing rights holders to reserve their rights by opting out.
The UK government has made it clear that they prefer option number 3, the ‘opt-out’ or ‘rights-reservation model’; however, researchers and creatives themselves have expressed grave concerns about its adverse effects on the creative sector. The creatives’ battles continue on even after the public consultation period: February saw the words ‘MAKE IT FAIR’—accent on the AI—printed against a solid turquoise background on all major UK newspapers. At the same time, we also ‘heard’ from 1000 artists who dropped completely silent albums titled ‘IS THIS WHAT WE WANT’ in protest of the UK government’s approach.
As the intensity of the debate reaches a white-hot level, we’d like to invite you to contribute to a Citizens’ Alternative proposal through an AI-assisted deliberation exercise. If you agree with the government’s preferred option, why so? If you don’t agree with it, what alternatives would you bring to the table?
Drop by this Saturday and join us!
About the Organizer
The Political Technologist is an independent multimedia publication that covers the latest developments and trends in the field of political technology. If you haven’t yet, subscribe to the mailing list to receive newsletters and event updates!