Industry welcomes government’s AI copyright announcement

Publishing industry organisations have reacted enthusiastically to news that the Australian Government has ruled out relaxing copyright rules for generative AI training.

Attorney-General Michelle Rowland announced on Sunday that the government will resist industry pressure by declining to accept a Productivity Commission interim recommendation exempting text and data mining from copyright laws.

Australian Society of Authors CEO Lucy Hayward said, “We thank the Attorney-General for this crucial decision and commitment to stand behind the creative industries and protect the rights of authors and illustrators.”

The next steps, she added, are “to ensure that Australian authors and illustrators are compensated for the theft of their work to train large language models and that AI developers seek permission to use copyright work into the future through established licensing pathways”.

Copyright Agency chair Kate Harrison said, “The decision by the Australian Government to reject demands to introduce free exceptions in favour of AI developers will ensure that AI development in Australia can proceed fairly, with a clear expectation that creators are to be compensated properly for the use of their work.”

The Australian Publishers Association (APA) said, “This is a welcome outcome for publishers, authors, illustrators and creators across books, screen, music and news media. It provides greater certainty for publishers when licensing content to technology companies, investing in new Australian-authored works [and] protecting against unlicensed use of creative content in AI systems.”

But the APA also cautioned that the Attorney-General’s announcement leaves open a range of questions, including:

• How generative AI uses creative content and whether transparency of training data should be required
• How copyright is enforced in the age of AI, particularly in offshore environments
• How Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property (ICIP) is respected
• What the role of voluntary licensing solutions is in supporting AI innovation.

The Copyright Agency also welcomed the government’s forthcoming review of licensing structures to support AI development. “Licensing for AI is a rapidly growing market, including in Australia, where it is facilitated by technology-neutral copyright settings and licensing infrastructure,” the orgnaisation said.

“There are a variety of licensing models in place and emerging, including licences from large publishers that hold masses of content and collective solutions that aggregate content from many rights-holders.”

All 3 organisations are members of the government’s revived Copyright & Artificial Intelligence Reference Group (CAIRG), which brings together representatives of 70 industry organisations.

Pictured: Attorney-General Michelle Rowland.

Category: Local news