Reuters US courts are moving towards a pivotal year on whether training generative AI on copyrighted works is ‘fair use,’ with inconsistent signals across decisions and mounting pressure for licensing models.
Reuters As AI accelerates, lawyers are increasingly leaning on existing legal frames such as product liability, privacy, consumer protection, and copyright. The practical direction is incremental accountability through familiar doctrines rather than a single global AI code.
Reuters E-discovery is becoming an AI governance problem, with legal teams being pushed to show defensible preservation, retention, and ‘legal hold’ discipline for new data sources, including GenAI outputs and deepfake style evidence risks.
GOV.UK The UK Anti Corruption Strategy includes a policy signal that enforcement bodies intend to pilot the use of artificial intelligence to speed up complex investigations, framing AI as a tool that must be controlled and audited in sensitive state functions.
The Economic Times India’s copyright policy process for generative AI remains live, with the consultation timeline extended. This is another example of copyright becoming a frontline governance lever for model development and deployment.
Regulation
UK Parliament House of Lords Library A new parliamentary briefing on autonomous AI risk frames the policy problem as control and accountability, not only innovation. It reinforces that legislative scrutiny is now centred on how to make advanced systems governable in practice.
UK Parliament House of Lords lists the Artificial Intelligence Regulation Bill among items on the day’s business paper, which is a practical sign that AI specific legislation remains in parliamentary bandwidth at the start of 2026.
VWV highlights that the Data Use and Access Act pathway does not change copyright yet, but it sets a timed roadmap toward a report and economic impact assessment, which keeps compliance planning anchored to March 2026 milestones.
Scottish Government opened a consultation on extending FOI coverage to private and third sector care home and care at home providers, which would expand transparency duties in a sector where digital tools and automated decision support are increasingly used.
Scottish Government published an Easy Read version for the same consultation, which is a useful accessibility signal for governance processes that increasingly need to explain technology enabled decisions to affected people.
Scottish Government Consultations provides the response portal and timetable, which is the operational entry point for stakeholder submissions and evidence on scope, burdens, and enforcement.
Cases
Reuters says 2026 is likely to be pivotal on whether training generative AI on copyrighted works is fair use, with conflicting early signals that could push markets toward licensing or entrench broad fair use arguments.
Reuters previews a broader 2026 litigation slate where AI related claims sit alongside antitrust and privacy disputes, reinforcing that courts are still doing a large share of practical boundary setting for AI deployment.
Bloomberg Law argues that even if federal policy tries to dampen state AI regulation, courts will keep shaping accountability, with design liability and chatbot harm theories becoming a fast moving compliance frontier.
Academia
CUP Artificial Intelligence is an area of law where legal frameworks are still in early stages. The chapter discusses some of the core HCI-related concerns with AI, including deepfakes, bias and discrimination, and concepts within AI and intellectual property including AI infringement and AI protection.
SSRN ‘Simulated Justice’ offers a theory driven lens on how alignment and ‘coherence’ narratives can reshape expectations of legal legitimacy around AI systems, which is useful for framing governance claims beyond compliance checklists.
arXiv Pat-DEVAL proposes an evaluation approach for automated patent drafting that explicitly tests ‘legal professional compliance,’ which is relevant to practical guardrails for legal GenAI deployment.
Adoption of AI
Solicitors Journal UK legal sector reporting is increasingly quantifying AI as productivity and cost impact, which strengthens the business case narrative but also raises client side expectations for transparency on AI use in matters.
HaDEA EU funding pipeline signals continue to pull AI into regulated industrial contexts. Even where the instrument is funding, the practical governance effect is earlier compliance planning and audit readiness for publicly funded AI work.
Security Today points to ISO 42001 certification as a credibility signal in responsible AI management, which is likely to matter more in supplier due diligence and public sector style assurance questionnaires.
Events
Westminster eForum ‘Next steps for data protection in the UK’ is scheduled for 15 January 2026 and explicitly flags AI and smart data schemes alongside ICO priorities, which makes it a near term policy signal watchpoint.
ETSI AI and Data Conference 2026 runs 9–11 February 2026 and is directly linked to standards and policy interfacing themes, including AI and data governance in a European regulatory context.
TDWI will host an expert panel webinar on practical AI governance and balancing innovation, risk, and responsibility, which is useful for shaping your readiness check language and client facing framing.
Takeaway
The practical centre of gravity is shifting toward evidence. Whether through FOI style transparency duties, copyright driven disclosure and licensing pressures, or tort style design liability, organisations will increasingly need auditable governance narratives that stand up outside the vendor slide deck.
Sources: UK Parliament, Scottish Government, Reuters, Bloomberg Law, VWV, arXiv, Security Today, Westminster Forum, TDWI, ETSI, SSRN, Solicitors Journal