Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has reaffirmed that Australia’s creators and the copyright laws protecting them are central to the country’s future in a new major speech.
Delivered on Wednesday (July 15th), the speech confirmed the government will stand up a new Office of AI and Australian Standards, building on existing work across government – including the Attorney-General’s ongoing review of copyright law – as Australia works out how creators are protected and paid as AI platforms train on their work.
“This world leading framework is about Australia choosing to shape the future rather than letting the future of AI shape us,” Albanese said. “This framework is about protecting our national interests and ensuring certainty for growth, jobs and investment. If we set our national standards high, then we can make AI stand for Australia’s interests.”
The Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) and the Authorship Collecting Society Australia Aotearoa (ACSAA) welcomed the announcement as evidence the government sees Australian copyright as an asset rather than an obstacle. Group CEO Claire Pullen said big tech had “invested heavily in trying to say our copyright laws are a problem to be solved, rather than what they are – an opportunity” to build new markets and reinforce the billions creative workers already generate for the economy.
“Australian stories are a critical part of our shared future, supported by the right copyright settings,” Pullen said. “Today, our Prime Minister made it clear that theft of creative works is unacceptable and that Australia is ready for the opportunities ahead.”
She added that Australia is well placed to attract AI infrastructure investment on its own terms. “We are in the driver’s seat to set the pace for this change, and it’s time for the foreign big tech companies to heed the messages the government has been sending them for almost a year, and that we have heard again today,” she said, adding AWG and ACSAA look forward to working with the new Office of AI “to ensure Australian creators remain in control of their work” through a framework built on consent, credit and compensation.
APRA AMCOS struck a similar note, with CEO Dean Ormston calling the speech clear and unequivocal support for the country’s artists and rights holders. “The Prime Minister has made it clear. The future of AI development in Australia must respect creator rights, that permission and payment must be sought, he crucially, the creative economy must benefit from AI innovation and development in Australia,” Ormston said.
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Ormston also praised the Attorney-General for ruling out a copyright exception for AI training, and said the new Office of AI now needs to turn that policy certainty into “serious industry-to-industry licensing negotiations between platforms and rights holders, not further rounds of tech sector avoidance.”
He said any licensing framework must treat Australian creative IP as “an integral, appreciating national asset in its own right, not a line item to be settled quickly and cheaply”, and that the Office of AI must also put Indigenous cultural intellectual property “at the centre” of decisions about which cultural works AI platforms can use.
Ormston singled out Anthropic for particular criticism, pointing to the company’s reported push for AU$15 billion in Australian data centre investment while it continues to argue against paying for Australian IP it has already used to train its models.
“That is not investment, that is a company trying to get its core input for free, and Australian artists and copyright owners should not be expected to subsidise Anthropic’s business model,” he said, referencing the company’s US$1.5 billion settlement last year over claims it used pirated copies of copyrighted work to train its models. “That is not a company asking for time to work through a complex new technology. That is a company with a demonstrated pattern of taking first and paying only when caught.”
ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd said: “The Prime Minister could not have been clearer: Australian writers and musicians keep ownership and control of their work. Artists control what that work is worth, not the Government and not a technology company.
“Control of price, value and terms of use are what underpin a commercial licensing market. The artist decides what their work is worth and who may use it. That is how licensing works everywhere else in the world and it is how it should work here. In the Prime Minister’s words: anything less is theft,” she continued.
“This is clear message to AI companies: now is the time to get on with licensing. Right now deals are being signed across music, journalism and publishing around the world. Australia’s creative industries are ready do business.”
The organisations said they now want to see the government’s rhetoric translated into a working licensing system. APRA AMCOS said it looks forward to working with the Office of AI, the Attorney-General, the Minister for Industry, the Assistant Minister for the Digital Economy and industry partners “to convert the Government’s certainty on copyright into a functioning, paid licensing framework built on consent and payment as quickly as possible”.
