Well, the Australian government could pay writers for work scraped by AI bots
21 September 2026
The Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, appears to have watered down a commitment to compensate Australian creatives whose work is being copied by AI companies. In a speech given at the University of Sydney, in July this year, Albanese undertook to enshrine, in law, copyright protection for all Australian artists and writers:
Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work. Our laws will spell that out, plain as day. An artist’s creative endeavour is their work and their property. No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control.
Online content, which includes the work of bloggers among others — and surely low-hanging fruit in the eyes of the AI companies — now seems to sit in a separate category. Under new proposals, when it comes to accessing work published online, AI companies only need to negotiate with enough copyright holders, not all:
AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic would be allowed to train their models on online content without paying its creators as long as they struck deals with enough rights holders, under one copyright reform plan put forward in government documents seen by the ABC.
How to interpret that? If enough copyright holders agree content they published online can be used to train agents, it sounds like AI companies can use any content they can find. But what is the precise definition of enough copyright holders in the first place? Only the big players, the large media outlets? Will independent, smaller, publishers be pushed aside?
The policy revisions come as a result of concerns AI companies have that they will be breaking copyright laws. This might mean they will withhold investment in Australian AI infrastructure, something the Australian government does not want.
I’m not sure how many Australian creatives, particularly independents publishing content online, are surprised by the apparent change in the government’s position.
Like others, I wondered how the AI companies, who have considerable political clout, would react to being dictated to in such a fashion. Particularly as they’ve been able to help themselves to whatever material they can get their hands on for several years anyway.
Of course the Australian government still has the option to compensate local creatives themselves, and be seen, to some degree, to be keeping their word to uphold copyright protection. Skim off some of the tax take from the AI companies, and give a little to Australian writers and artists, whose work has been gratuitously plundered.
But, in case you thought I was serious, no, you can be sure that’s not going to happen.
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artificial intelligence, Australia, copyright, politics, technology