Business lawyer Rebecca Steer from Bristol Creative Industries member Charles Russell Speechlys recently delivered an event covering the latest employment, copyright, data and artificial intelligence (AI) legal updates that creative digital agencies need to know. Here’s a summary of the advice she shared.

Bristol Creative Industries members can book a free 30 minute legal advice session with Rebecca Steer. Slots are available on 23 May and 27 June.

Employment regulations

A new duty on employers to proactively take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment has been in force since October 2024, as part of the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010).

Steps you should already be taking include:

• Develop an effective anti-sexual harassment policy
• Carry out risk assessments
• Provide clear and accessible reporting channels
• Provide training
• Deal with complaints immediately
• Consider third party harassment
• Conduct staff surveys to measure confidence of an harassment-free environment

Employment Rights Bill

The government’s major changes to employment rights are expected to take effect from 2026. Rebecca advised that you should be prepared to adjust the way you recruit, contract and manage your workforce.

The changes, which are subject to the legislation being passed, include:

• New day one rights for employees covering not being unfairly dismissed, receiving statutory sick pay, claiming paternity and parental leave, and flexible working.
• Enhanced protection for new mothers with prohibition on dismissal during pregnancy or after a protected period of maternity, adoption or shared parental leave (other than redundancy).
• Ending “exploitative zero hours contracts” with employers required to make a guaranteed hours offer to a worker after the end of a set period (12 weeks is the suggestion), workers to receive reasonable notice of cancellation or a change to a shift, and compensation to be paid to the worker where a shift is cancelled, moved or curtailed at short notice.

To prepare for the changes, Rebecca recommended that you review certain situations, such as:

• Day one right to unfair dismissal: Ensure managers spot underperformers at an early stage and embed good practices for probationary period reviews.
• Day one right to flexible working: Review flexible working policies and consider justifications for refusing requests with draft questions checked by legal experts.
• Zero hours contracts: Monitor the number of hours individuals are working to be prepared for the new rules.

Data (Use and Access) Bill

The consultation period for the Data (Use and Access) Bill ended in January 2025. If accepted, it is likely to receive Royal Assent mid-2025 with enforcement likely to be in early 2026.

The key changes are:

• Smart Data: Data intermediaries can act as trusted third parties that facilitate customer data sharing by service providers (e.g. financial services) with authorised intermediaries.
• DSARs (data subject access requests) will be for reasonable and proportionate reasons and additional time can be added before formal timescales to clarify scope.
• Fines for cookie/direct marketing infringement will be increased from the current £500,000 cap to those under UK GDPR (higher of 4% or £17.5 million).
• Cookies: The Bill widens the scope for implementing cookies and similiar tracking technologies without the need for consent under certain conditions.
• Automated decision making: The Bill relaxes rules on automated decision making, potential allowing more flex to use in AI automated systems.

To prepare, Rebecca recommended the following:

• Review and update data policies and procedures: Ensure your practice align with the proposed changes, particularly if you use automated design making (such as AI), and update procedures around DSARs, data protection impact assessments and the use of legitimate interest as a lawful basis for processing.
• Review third party data sharing agreements and ensure they reflect the higher fines.
• Review cookies being used and ensure policies reflect the changes.
• Update training for staff, particularly around automated decision making.

Copyright and AI government consultation

A consultation on a text and data mining exemption in respect of AI development closed on 25 February 2025.

Key points:

• Proposes to expand the text and data mining exemption for AI training to all works freely available on the internet as well as any the user has paid a subscription to access.
• Rights holders would have the ability to “opt out” their rights and require a licence. The consultation sought views on how this would be accomplished in practice through technical standards.

To prepare, Rebecca advised the following:

• Keep out an eye on the introduction of the opt out rules if you or your clients are content creators.
• If you are designing an AI system, bake in the UK Voluntary Code of Practice for the Cyber Security of AI which covers the lifecycle of the development phases (design, development, maintenance and end of life).
• If you are working on AI systems for development in Europe, adhere to the EU AI Act.

Use of Generative AI in agencies: The intellectual property risks

Rebecca also covered the use of Generative AI and the risks to IP.

Risks include infringement of copyright, trademark and privacy rights when generating AI outputs. You may also inadvertedly include personal data in an input which is used to train the model or an output contains personal data which is not authorised for processing.

Other risks are hallucinations, bias, out of date information and lack of transparency.

To minimise the risks, Rebecca’s advice included:

• Create a policy which manages what AI tools can be used and how they can be used.
• Carry out internal employee training on responsible use of AI.
• Check outputs for accuracy.
• Avoid using personal data in AI tools unless you have carried out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) and considered data protection obligations.
• Check if AI is permitted or restricted expressly in client contracts.
• Ensure client materials provided to use are licensed for use in AI applications and all rights are cleared for such use.
• Check any insurance policies and cover.
• Amend supplier and freelancer contracts to include compliance with AI policies.
• Provide training for suppliers and freelancers.

Bristol Creative Industries members can book a free 30 minute legal advice session with business lawyer Rebecca Steer. Slots are available on 23 May and 27 June.

About Bristol Creative Industries

Bristol Creative Industries is the membership network that supports the region's creative sector to learn, grow and connect, driven by the common belief that we can achieve more collectively than alone.