SYDNEY, Australia — The Australian prime minister’s assurances that tech and AI companies can’t use copyright-protected works including consent, credit and compensation has been warmly welcomed by the international music publishers community.
Earlier, on Wednesday, prime minister Anthony Albanese addressed AI in a presentation at the University of Sydney, with a speech that left no doubt about the government’s position.
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“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,” he remarked. “Anything less, is theft.”
Those comments put at ease an industry nervous that copyright projections could be carved out by a tech sector hungry to use music and creative works for AI purposes without licenses.
That won’t happen, Albanese insists. And the “implications are global,” notes John Phelan, director general of the Brussels-based International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), which represents 90% of the world’s commercially released music and whose members include Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony Music Publishing, Warner Chappell Music, BMG, Kobalt, Reservoir and Concord Music Publishing, alongside thousands of other indie publishers.
“Our international industry fully agrees” with Albanese’s stance, Phelan adds, “and looks forward to continuing to build only those AI and music markets which are built wholly on consent, credit and compensation.”
ICMP’s Australasian affiliate AMPAL had lobbied against text and data mining exceptions, and signed the creative industries’ Open Letter to Government, along with ARIA, AIR, APRA AMCOS and other trade bodies and artists, calling on the federal government to reject any weakening of copyright protections.
“Australia holds something no other country possesses: more than sixty thousand years of First Nations culture,” reads the AI Open Letter. “Those songs, stories, images and languages are living cultural heritage. Any framework that weakens the protection of creative work puts that heritage at risk of being absorbed into AI systems in ways that are extractive, disrespectful and irreversible.”
Members from the association and other industry bodies visited Parliament House in Canberra earlier this month, in a united effort to get the message through. “If AI companies want to use music, they need permission, they need a license and they need to pay fairly,” AMPAL CEO Damian Rinaldi said at the time. “Licensing is already working. Australia should not weaken copyright to solve a problem the market is already solving.”
Albanese agreed. And despite lobbying from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google and others, the government rejected the tech sector requests that music be used without permission, and pushed back on proposals for a fund for the use of creative industries’ work.
In his speech this week, Albanese remarked that Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists “must retain ownership and control of their work,” and that “our laws will spell that out, plain as day.” At the same time, Albanese announced the create of an “Office of AI,” operating within the department of prime minister and cabinet and facilitate the design of “Australian standards” for the technology.
Australia’s industry leaders have welcomed Albanese’s comments, while the ICMP’s Phelan thanked the the PM for delivering a “landmark and highly positive statement” on the issue.
The prime minister’s speech “AI in Australia’s interests” can be read here.
