Opt in to opt out? Renewed criticism from Australian creatives over AI training
SHARE THIS ARTICLE
The MEAA has criticised the Labor government for meeting with Open AI and Anthropic senior executives days after a leaked government proposal revealed Australian creators may have to opt-out of AI training.
As reported by the ABC, the national broadcaster recently received documents that suggest the government is considering copyright reform amid its consultations with AI giants.
According to the documents, the AI companies submitted proposed amendments to AI laws by way of a text and data mining condition and opt-out mechanism to replace explicit licensing agreements. If enacted, the proposal would require creators to manually block their work from AI and likely further impact employment viability in the creative sector.
AI companies have long expressed frustration with Australian copyright laws, claiming data scraping laws bottleneck progress, also noting that the current opt-in set up is logistically impossible.
Similarly, the Tech Council of Australia - which is chaired by Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar - has echoed this sentiment, noting in an address to the National Press Club last year that “we still remain an outlier when it comes to copyright”.
He continued: “This is a barrier to many AI companies training or hosting their models in Australia. This is even a barrier to Australian born companies. We are in a perverse situation where copyright holders aren’t seeing any more money, but we also don’t see the economic upside of training and hosting models in Australia.”
Further, OpenAI reportedly threatened to abandon data centre infrastructure plans if copyright laws aren’t changed, with many wondering whether this led to the confidential discussions and alleged consideration of an opt-out mechanism.
As the representative body for Australia media and entertainment professionals, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has criticised the proposed model, noting that opt-out options do not give workers adequate control over their work.
MEAA acting chief executive Adam Portelli said: "The content powering today's AI systems has either been taken without permission through mass scraping or obtained through licensing deals struck by AI companies with publishers, record companies and media organisations. In the first case, it is theft. In the second, workers have often had no power to prevent those deals and have frequently received little or no compensation."
“Workers in the creative and media industries need certainty. Opt-out proposals are irrelevant for past theft and insufficient for future AI training. Workers must have full control over the use of their work, meaningful protection against unauthorised use, and fair compensation whenever their work is used.”
Portelli also noted that copyright standards are not the only system to protect workers from content theft, adding: “effective AI standards must include the principle of Equitable Remuneration, which delivers an inalienable right to creative and media workers to receive compensation when their work is used, including where works are used by AI systems or through licensing arrangements entered into by rights holders.”
Further, ACTU secretary Melissa Donnelly wrote in the AFR: “Unions have repeatedly demonstrated that large tech companies have built their products off the theft of creative work in Australia. Strong regulatory protections are required to get basic justice for creative workers and protect our cultural sovereignty.”
“We need protections that ensure creative and media workers have ownership of their work, control over how it is used and can decide its price and value.”
RELATED TERMS
Training is the process of enhancing a worker's knowledge and abilities to do a certain profession. It aims to enhance trainees' work behaviour and performance on the job.
Want to see more stories from trusted news sources?Make HR Leader a preferred news source on Google.
