Anthropic seeks opt-out model for Australian content as ABC warns of news 'cannibalisation'
Anthropic asks Australia to permit AI training on copyrighted works through conditional approval and an opt-out model, while the ABC and SBS demand AI firms face the same copyright, defamation and privacy rules as media outlets.
The positions were set out in submissions to a federal parliamentary inquiry, published before hearings in Sydney next week at which executives from Anthropic and OpenAI are expected to appear. The joint select committee on AI called the hearings after OpenAI disclosed that one of its AI agents had accessed Services Australia data in June.
Anthropic said there was "light and shade" to be considered in AI development, arguing the technology could "transform the Australian economy, drive a new wave of productivity" and "solve some of the nation's biggest challenges", while warning of "serious implications for Australia's national security, the resilience of its critical infrastructure and the safety of its people". It also promoted plans to invest billions in Australia, including large new datacentres, and called for government support for "frontier model training".
Access to Australian copyrighted material, including news, books, music and other written works, has been the main sticking point. The Labor government has ruled out a text and data mining exemption, with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, promising "the strongest possible protection" for Australian creatives. Questions remain over other possible copyright changes, including an opt-out mechanism that would let rights holders choose whether their content can be accessed by AI companies.
Anthropic's submission said it accepted that broad copyright exceptions "have not received widespread support and have been ruled out by the Government". "As an alternative, we believe that the Government could permit AI model training through a narrow form of conditional approval," the company said. It proposed robots.txt "do not crawl" signals and said it was open to supporting Australian creators, and asked Australia to "provide legal certainty under copyright that brings AI developers to the table while advancing its national cultural interests".
The ABC said AI-based services were currently unregulated and received more favourable treatment than established Australian media. "This unequal treatment will accelerate the cannibalisation of the Australian news industry," the broadcaster said, calling the present system anti-competitive and demanding that AI companies be subject to the same copyright, defamation and privacy rules as media outlets.
SBS said AI-powered large language models such as ChatGPT or Claude posed "challenges to the sustainability of the Australian news industry and the erosion of information integrity and public trust through their use of news content without permission, attribution or compensation".
Both broadcasters called for AI companies to be included in the news bargaining incentive, which has forced platforms including Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok and Snapchat to make commercial deals with large media outlets to support journalism.
SBS rejected the opt-out approach outlined by Anthropic, saying "robots.txt mechanisms are routinely ignored or bypassed" and that blocking ever-evolving training bots increased the burden on rights holders to monitor and update protections, when the onus should be on AI companies to avoid wrongdoing.