Lunchbreak deal to find ways to pay artists for work hoovered up by AI
By Paul Sakkal
Unions and Australian tech giants have agreed to work on a model to compensate musicians, authors and possibly media outlets for the content used to feed artificial intelligence tools.
The in-principle undertaking, discussed at the government’s economic roundtable, seemed impossible a fortnight ago when a debate blew up over the prospect of large language models, such as ChatGPT, learning from articles, songs and art without compensating creators.
ACTU president Sally McManus and Tech Council of Australia chair Scott Farquhar.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Cutting-edge AI tools “learn” from digital content and then allow users to recreate the styles of artists, musicians and authors, sometimes yielding almost identical final results to copyrighted works, and in a fraction of the time. Workers and unions fear the results would devalue creative content.
Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar was one of the top advocates in favour of AI hoovering up content, declaring last month that copyright exemptions “could unlock billions of dollars of foreign investment”.
Farquhar was lobbied by Australian Council of Trade Unions assistant secretary Joseph Mitchell at lunch – tuna sandwiches and sushi were on the menu for roundtable participants – on Wednesday in a small area near the federal cabinet room. Both men were attending the government’s three-day economic reform roundtable.
Two sources familiar with the conversation between Mitchell and Farquhar, unauthorised to speak publicly, said the pair had a frank exchange over AI at which the tech mogul sought to understand workers’ concerns.
Mitchell’s boss, ACTU secretary Sally McManus, said productive talks at this week’s summit had created a breakthrough.
“There was discussion with the Tech Council [chaired by Farquhar] and the ACTU about wanting to address the issue of properly paying creatives, journalists and academics,” McManus said.
“We’re going to give this a real good go at coming up with a model that makes sure that people are actually paid for what they’ve produced. So that’s a big thing.”
Tech Council of Australia chief executive Damian Kassabgi spoke more cautiously in a written statement, saying no details had been agreed on a copyright model.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers with (from left) Finance Minister Katy Gallagher, Treasury secretary Jenny Wilkinson and Productivity Commission member Angela Jackson at the roundtable.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“We are hopeful we can find a path forward on copyright that allows AI training to take place in Australia while also including appropriate protections for creators that make a living from their work,” he said.
“Tech companies have … created systems that allow artists to promote, get more clicks and find new revenue streams.”
AI has been used to generate fake songs for artists across the world including stadium headliner Drake, late songwriting legend Brian Wilson and Grammy-nominated Australian musician Paul Bender, who discovered facsimiles of his work on social media that he had not written.
In Wednesday’s session, Australian Industry Group chief Innes Willox claimed union bosses were talked out of their plan for new AI legislation.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers argued in favour of a lighter touch. The unions’ softening cleared the path for Labor to come up with a plan that emphasised the economic benefits of AI over its potential downsides.
“There was a very heartening discussion about AI,” Chalmers said at the post-roundtable press conference on Thursday evening. “In the room, by sharing understandings on this question, people got a little bit closer together. Not a unanimous view yet, but a little bit closer together.”
In a report outlining a potential $200 billion AI-driven boost to the Australian economy, the Productivity Commission said this month that AI models required large amounts of data and suggested exempting “text and data mining” from copyright restrictions, which has occurred in other countries. Advocates, including Labor MP Michelle Ananda-Rajah, said such a move would help give Australian firms sufficient content to create valuable local AI products.
Credit: Matt Golding
Matt Stanton, chief executive of Nine Entertainment, which owns this masthead, argued this month that weakening copyright protections to allow AI firms to legally obtain Australian data, which had already largely happened due to it being a legal grey area, would amount to legalising theft.
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