National Union of Journalists

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is the trade union and professional association for journalists in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Founded in 1907 and representing approximately 23,000 members across broadcasting, newspapers, news agencies, magazines, book publishing, public relations, photography, and digital media, the NUJ is the primary organised voice for journalism workers in its jurisdiction and one of the oldest continuously operating journalists' unions in the world. Since 2024 the union has run a named AI campaign focused on mandatory consent, fair compensation, and binding regulatory frameworks for generative AI's use of journalistic content.

Structure and representation

The NUJ operates through a democratic delegate system. Its National Executive Council of 27 elected members governs between annual delegate meetings, the union's supreme decision-making body. Sector councils cover broadcasting, freelance, magazines, newspapers, and public relations; regional councils sit for Ireland and Scotland. Laura Davison has served as General Secretary since her election in October 2024; Natasha Hirst serves as President.

The union affiliates with the Trades Union Congress (TUC), the Scottish TUC, and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Internationally it is a founding-era member of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). Domestically it works alongside sister unions through the Federation of Entertainment Unions, a body that coordinates UK entertainment and media labour organisations.

AI campaign — core position

The NUJ launched its dedicated AI campaign in January 2024, framing generative AI as posing an existential threat to both journalism employment and public trust in news. The union's position is not a categorical opposition to AI tools in newsrooms: it acknowledges potential assistive applications under appropriate oversight. Its objection is specific to the unauthorised use of journalists' copyright-protected work to train commercial large language models without consent, credit, or compensation, and to the deployment of AI tools that could displace human journalists without collective bargaining.

The campaign's principal demands are:

• Mandatory opt-in licensing. AI developers must obtain consent and pay fair compensation before using journalistic content for training. The NUJ rejects opt-out models that it argues place an unfair burden on rights holders to police compliance.
• Transparency. Developers must disclose which datasets informed their models and provide accessible mechanisms for rights holders to audit whether their content was included.
• Binding regulatory frameworks with sanctions. Voluntary codes are insufficient; legislation must mandate standards and create accessible routes to redress when breaches occur. The union has criticised delays in the UK Intellectual Property Office's voluntary AI and copyright code.
• Collective bargaining rights. Employers must engage journalists' representatives before deploying AI tools in newsrooms, with AI provisions embedded in collective agreements as a condition of new technology deployment.
• Labelling. AI-generated output in published journalism must be disclosed to readers.

The union notes documented harms already occurring: inaccurate AI-generated stories attributed to named journalists, use of journalists' likenesses and work without consent, and deepfake-facilitated misinformation.

Copyright and regulatory advocacy

The NUJ has engaged every available formal channel to advance its position. It submitted written evidence to the House of Lords Communications and Digital Committee's inquiry into large language models, arguing that unlawful scraping of copyright journalistic content was already occurring and that developers must face mandatory regulatory frameworks with sanctions rather than voluntary codes. The committee's report aligned with the union on training-data transparency — calling for a mechanism allowing rights holders to audit datasets — but stopped short of requiring legislation.

When the UK government opened its Copyright and AI consultation in December 2024, the NUJ coordinated a member response campaign and reiterated its demand for an opt-in model; it explicitly declined to endorse any of the government's four proposed options, characterising the consultation as at risk of rewriting copyright protections in favour of the AI industry. The government's initial preference for a text-and-data-mining exception with an opt-out was ultimately withdrawn following creative-industry pressure, including the NUJ's submissions, and as of mid-2025 no preferred option had been agreed.

Parliamentary support for the campaign has been mobilised through an Early Day Motion — a formal parliamentary expression of opinion — that recognises the NUJ's concerns over AI use of journalistic content without consent, notes the risk of grave harm to journalism and democracy, and supports calls for government action requiring AI developers to comply with intellectual property law.

The Guardian incident

In November 2024, journalists at The Guardian staged a four-day strike protesting the planned sale of The Observer to Tortoise Media. During the walkout, Guardian management offered non-striking staff an AI tool — reportedly Claude — to generate headline suggestions and accessibility alt-text for images. NUJ members first noticed headlines that looked anomalous before realising the cause.

The NUJ declared it was "deeply disturbed" by the deployment and characterised it as a "deeply cynical attempt by management to undermine the strike." The union instructed its members to withdraw their cooperation with all AI development at The Guardian until formal safeguards governing the technology's use had been agreed. The incident became a prominent case in the wider journalism labour movement's argument that AI tools are being used as instruments to weaken workers' collective bargaining power — what critics termed an AI scab.

Coalition work

The NUJ participates in two primary cross-sector coalitions on AI and copyright. The Creative Rights in AI Coalition brings together more than seventy organisations from across the UK creative industries — including the Guardian, Financial Times, Society of Authors, Equity, BECTU, and Getty Images — in opposition to copyright exceptions for AI training and in favour of a licensed-access model. The NUJ also sits within the Creators' Rights Alliance and holds a seat on the UK government's Copyright AI Working Group, giving it a direct channel into policy formation.

Domestically, the NUJ participates in the TUC's Creative Sector AI Working Group, the cross-union body coordinating labour strategy on generative AI across UK creative industries. NUJ chapel representatives have also engaged directly at the employer level: at Taylor & Francis, chapel reps successfully advocated for improved transparency regarding the publisher's AI licensing arrangements.

International dimension

The NUJ is represented on the International Federation of Journalists' AI Working Group, established in April 2023 at the IFJ Executive Committee meeting in Athens. Mike Holderness represents the NUJ alongside delegates from the News Guild–CWA (US), SNJ (France), Journalistforbundet (Sweden), NWU (US), and unions in Australia, Tunisia, and Peru. In June 2024 the IFJ and its affiliated unions issued a joint set of recommendations calling for action on AI in media, establishing an international coordinating position that the NUJ's domestic campaign reflects and feeds.