Anthony Albanese has promised “the strongest possible protection” for Australian creatives against misuse of their work by artificial intelligence models, warning it would be “theft” if writers, artists and musicians didn’t have control of their work or receive payment for its use.
Amid growing community concern about large energy-intensive datacentres, the federal government will also set strict new rules for the facilities, including where they can be built, that they shouldn’t compete for land with housing, their power and water use, and that they don’t increase electricity prices for consumers.
In a major speech on AI, the prime minister announced the establishment of an office of AI and rejected the prospect of large companies like OpenAI and Anthropic being given free use of Australian data – a development warmly welcomed by creatives including the Australian Recording Industry Association (Aria) – but questions remain about how the government will modernise copyright laws and regulate datacentres.
“Let me make this crystal clear: not everything produced in Australia is up for grabs,” Albanese said on Wednesday.
“Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work. Our laws will spell that out, plain as day.”
Labor has long ruled out giving a text and data mining exemption allowing AI firms to train their large language models on Australian content without compensation to creators, but there has been lobbying from big tech and an industry proposal for special copyright exemptions.
Cabinet discussions on copyright reforms are continuing, with a diversity of views among senior ministers, but Albanese’s speech was the strongest assurance yet that journalists, musicians, artists and writers would be protected in the age of AI.
“No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control. That includes the artist’s control of the price and value of their work,” Albanese said.
“Anything less is theft.”
Annabelle Herd, CEO of Aria, was relieved to hear Albanese’s guarantees. She said groups like hers were keen to sign licensing deals with AI companies to ensure artists were fairly compensated for the use of their work.
“We don’t know exactly what most of these AI companies want, they haven’t made a public case about what the problem is, but there isn’t one,” she told Guardian Australia.
“[Albanese’s speech] should be a very strong message to the AI companies, they should pick up the phone and start licensing … we are very good and efficient at licensing at scale.
“We’d like get on with it, not be stuck in this ongoing no man’s land.”
Jeff Bleich, Anthropic’s general counsel, said the company “respect[s] the process articulated by the prime minister today for establishing Australia’s AI framework and take seriously Anthropic’s responsibility…
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