The Creative Content Exchange: how creative SMEs can prepare to license content for AI

For photographers, designers, publishers, musicians, and other creative businesses, digital content may be valuable to artificial intelligence developers as training or testing material. Yet smaller rights holders often lack the bargaining power, infrastructure and budget needed to negotiate with large technology companies. The UK’s developing Creative Content Exchange (CCE) could help close that gap.

What is the CCE?
Announced in the Government’s Creative Industries Sector Plan, the CCE is intended to become a trusted marketplace through which digitised cultural and creative assets can be sold, bought, licensed, and accessed with permission. Its objectives include fair payment, responsible content use, and facilitating innovation across the creative industry.

Rather than replacing existing marketplaces or private deals, the CCE is being tested as a catalyst and incubator for different commercial licensing models. By bringing content owners and approved users together, it could reduce transaction costs, make valuable catalogues easier to discover, and give AI developers access to high-quality material on clearer legal terms.

Why is a licensing marketplace needed?
The Government previously proposed allowing commercial text and data mining, including AI training, unless rights holders expressly opted out. Following opposition from the creative industries, its March 2026 report no longer supports that proposal as its preferred approach. For now, where AI training in the UK involves copying protected works and no exception applies, permission will usually be required.

Such permission is typically obtained through licensing. However, licensing has limited commercial value if a small business cannot reach licensees, establish what it owns, or afford enforcement due to limited resources. A workable market must make content easier to identify, value, and license. This is what the CCE hopes to achieve.

Where has the CCE reached?

• June 2025: the CCE was announced as part of the Creative Industries Sector Plan.
• January 2026: a pilot involving 12 leading cultural institutions was announced, including the Natural History Museum, the National Archives and the V&A.
• April 2026: a beta platform developed by Harbr Data entered early testing with selected stakeholders.
• May to June 2026: an Early Adopters Fund offered eligible organisations up to £125,000 to address legal, technical and operational barriers to onboarding.
• September 2026 to April 2027: successful early adopters are expected to make their content available, with the wider pilot continuing until mid-2027.

At the time of writing, the CCE remains a pilot, rather than an established marketplace generally available to small creative businesses. Wider access is expected after further testing, but no confirmed date has been announced.

What could it offer smaller creative businesses?
First, the CCE could help smaller creators reach the licensing market collectively. An individual illustrator’s portfolio, publisher’s archive, or label’s catalogue may be too small to interest an AI developer alone. Pooling and standardising content could strengthen bargaining power and reduce transaction costs.

Second, the CCE could make rights easier to enforce. At present, smaller rights holders often face expensive litigation with limited resources. Standardised licences and audit trails could record access and permitted purposes. This would make breaches easier to prove, although content owners would remain responsible for enforcement.

Third, the CCE could generate alternative revenue streams for content creators. By testing different commercial models, the CCE could encourage recurring fees, usage-based royalties, or revenue sharing, which may better capture this long-term value.

Nevertheless, the CCE cannot completely eliminate infringement. It provides a route to authorised use; it is not a substitute for rights management or enforcement. So…

How can businesses prepare now?
Creative SMEs do not need to wait for the pilot to conclude. They can begin by:

1. Auditing ownership. Identify each work and confirm whether copyright belongs to the business, an employee, freelancer, performer, or another party. Review whether existing agreements permit licensing for AI-related purposes.
2. Creating a content register. Record the creator, ownership, date, format, provenance, and any restrictions for each asset. Reliable metadata will make a catalogue easier to value, package, and license.
3. Defining permitted uses. Decide whether to allow training, fine-tuning, testing, retrieval, or the generation of commercial outputs. “AI use” is too broad to function as a meaningful licence term.
4. Selecting a payment model. Pricing should reflect the content’s quality, uniqueness, size, and intended use. Businesses should also consider whether payment will be made once, periodically or by reference to usage or revenue.
5. Building contractual safeguards. Appropriate terms may address duration, territory, sublicensing, data security, attribution, reporting, audit rights, deletion, treatment of outputs, and termination.

The CCE’s published participation terms reflect these requirements: content owners remain responsible for rights clearance, pricing and end-user licence agreements. Businesses that can establish what they own, articulate its value and set clear boundaries for use will be best positioned to benefit. Preparing now could turn an uncertain AI risk into a new licensing opportunity.

If you are interested in licensing your creative assets, we are here to help at Briffa. Get in touch at info@briffa.com or fill out our contact form.

Written by Joe Clarke (Solicitor at Briffa) and Callista Neo (work experience student)