Are bloggers the same as writers, journalists, under the Australian AI framework?
21 July 2026
Last week the Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese unveiled his government’s AI strategy. Part of the proposed framework includes a provision to ensure Australian writers, musicians, artists, and journalists, are paid in the event their work is used in the development of AI agents.
This is as it should be. Anyone else who wants to access copyrighted material needs to pay. It should be no different for the big tech, and AI, companies.
As someone who writes predominately online, a blogger, I see myself as either a writer and/or a journalist, in terms of this framework. I know it sound like I’m being pedantic, and surely most people would assume a blogger is regarded as a writer or a journalist.
But is that the way I would actually be viewed under the proposed AI framework? Albanese, after all, made no mention of bloggers, or other online content creators.
Of course, the Prime Minister’s speech was a statement of policy intention, and the finer details, will, I assume, come later as the AI strategy is devised.
The matter is of interest though, as I’m one of who-knows-how-many Australian bloggers whose writings have been harvested in recent years, most likely by AI companies. Would bloggers also be subject to the provisions being proposed for writers, musicians, artists, and journalists?
Or does the exclusively digital nature of a blogger’s work somehow diminish its stature? Will any sort of payment for work copied or used by AI companies only apply to mediums that exist firstly in a physical form, such as books or paintings?
These are mediums that can be digitised (somehow), making them attractive fodder for knowledge hungry AI agents, but does their physical form still give them precedence?
To be clear, I’m not talking about copyright. Any work created in Australia is protected by copyright laws, including that of bloggers. Generally for copyright to apply, a work must be created by a person, be original, and be “fixed”, that is, the work must exist in a tangible form.
This includes content on a web page. Australian bloggers are covered then by copyright. Regardless of whether anyone actually takes notice.
But while Australian copyright laws apply to “people who express original ideas and information in certain forms“, the proposed AI strategy, based on what we know at present, seems far more specific. Writers, musicians, artists, and journalists. Not bloggers, or other content creators working online.
Time will tell though whether Albanese was being specific or not.
As I wrote last week, given the amount of scraping and copying that has already occurred, a large number of Australian creatives will have already lost out, in terms of compensation.
It’s my feeling then any payments that AI companies may be required to make, will only apply to works created after any legislation is enacted. Anything else could be complicated to say the least.
Again though, time will tell.
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