EU AI Act transparency deadlines, copyright suits escalate

AI developers face overlapping regulatory and legal pressure. The EU AI Act's transparency requirements for training data are advancing, and publishers are increasing copyright litigation over alleged scraping for model training. The European Commission's AI policy page (updated Jan 14, 2026) details transparency and documentation obligations. Cloudflare announced on Jan 15, 2026 that Human Native is joining Cloudflare to build a provenance-backed marketplace for licensed training data. (Sources: European Commission; Cloudflare blog.)

UK observers and class-action claims highlight gaps in UK copyright law as cases against AI firms rise. Computer Weekly (Jan 19, 2026) reports this draws attention to provenance, licensing, and consent for text and creative works. Cloudflare and TheOutpost.ai describe the Human Native acquisition as a commercial response: a marketplace that tracks dataset provenance, licensing terms, and human labeling so buyers and builders can demonstrate traceability and contractual terms. (Sources: Computer Weekly; TheOutpost.ai; Cloudflare.)

For model owners, the compliance window is narrowing. Teams should inventory data provenance, favor licensed or contracted datasets, and require vendor attestations before deployment to reduce regulatory risk and litigation exposure.

Why It Matters

• Inventory and provenance: ML teams must catalog training-data lineage and retain licensing metadata to meet EU transparency obligations and support audits.
• Procurement and legal: Procurement and legal teams should require clear dataset licensing terms and vendor attestations as part of model supply-chain contracts.
• Risk mitigation: Sourcing from provenance-backed marketplaces (e.g., Human Native via Cloudflare) can lower exposure to copyright claims and simplify regulatory reporting.
• Operational action: Integrate data-provenance checks into CI/CD pipelines and model cards to provide auditors and counsel with verifiable records ahead of inquiries.