Music publishers accuse AI firms of 'strong-arming' Australia over copyright

The ICMP, which represents Sony, Warner and Universal as well as thousands of independent publishers, said that of dozens of countries approached to dilute copyright rules, Australia appears to be the only one considering doing so. Its managing director, John Phelan, told Guardian Australia that AI companies were asking policymakers to "legitimise larceny" and were trying to "strong-arm Australian policymakers into 'if you don't do this, we won't invest'."

In evidence provided to Guardian Australia, the ICMP said Google's Gemini was able to reproduce lyrics from Australian artists including Minogue, G-Flip and Nick Cave. Phelan also pointed to an AI training dataset reported by The Atlantic in June containing more than 12 million songs pulled from YouTube videos, including tracks by Minogue, Cave and Hilltop Hoods. Google was approached for comment.

Phelan said 62 countries had considered making their own legal changes, but none of the other 61 had accepted the industry's demands by introducing a new text and data mining exception for commercial purposes or reducing exclusive rights and copyright. "The world is very much watching what Australia does," he said, adding that the global music industry and the creative industries it works with were "appalled by the idea of a statutory scheme or a government deal which would interfere with how Australian industries work and contract around the world".

In July, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it would be "theft" if artists did not retain control over whether their work was used to build and train AI, and over what they were paid for its use. Music, film, media and news organisations had expressed concern that the government was being lobbied behind closed doors by global tech companies.

This week the Labor chair of a parliamentary committee on artificial intelligence, Jo Briskey, and its deputy chair, Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam, wrote jointly to the prime minister recommending the government "examine current copyright settings" while ensuring creators retain control and are paid. The pair described the current situation as a stalemate, saying AI models were already training on copyrighted works in the United States without compensating creators, but that without changes to local law those companies were withholding training of frontier models in Australia. Independent senator David Pocock raised concerns that the committee was arriving at a position on copyright predetermined by the prime minister after staffer edits were seen in the letter; Briskey rejected the claim.

Anthropic's special envoy, Jeffrey Bleich, told the committee last week that the company was not trying to dictate terms but had shared information with the government about training and what the implications would be "with respect to our capacity to operate here". "You can't license the entire internet," he said. "Under existing Australian law, it's our understanding that that could be determined to be illegal if we weren't able to find a licence with every single person who had rights within Australia."

OpenAI's chief of economic policy, Adam Cohen, said the fair use exception in US law "fundamentally protects" the development of new technology, and pointed to agreements with News Corp and the Guardian as examples of deals for the use of work, while arguing US law did not require them.

Phelan said he believed panic had set in among AI companies over the cost of investment and the need to make a return, combined with continuing copyright litigation in the United States, and that they might be looking to Australia for a legislative solution.