Everything Australians put online could be scraped for AI under proposed new rules. How will you be affected?

The Albanese government is considering reforms that give US big tech unrestricted access to Australian content

1. Your posts scraped – legally In most cases, you own the content you create and share online, meaning you have copyright over the photos you take, the social media posts you write, and anything else you create and put online – from music to recipes or videos. Under reforms being considered by the government, AI companies would have the right to scrape your content if they make enough high-level deals with groups that represent traditional copyright holders, such as authors and musicians. The reforms have not been finalised and the government is still consulting. Lisa Harrison, lecturer in communication and media at Flinders University, says tech companies likely already scrape online content and use it to train their latest AI models. The proposed reforms could give them the legal right to do so. “These changes [would be] trying to catch up, really, with what’s already happening,” Harrison says. Anyone who didn’t want their content to be scraped would have to digitally protect their content, such as with a password or paywall, potentially restricting their online audience. If you run the website that hosts your content, you might be able to add a robots.txt file, which tells bots what they may and may not access, Harrison said. However, rights holder groups point out that not all scrapers observe the robots.txt protocol and it is not a practical way to opt out, particularly as it removes that content from search results. If you post on social media, the platform would control the access, not you.

2. Creators lose their incomesWriters, musicians, film-makers and artists are just some of the people who financially rely on owning their material. Claire Pullen, group chief executive of the Australian Writers’ Guild, says creators are already losing business to AI as it generates imitations, or sometimes identical regurgitations, of their work. They could lose even more income under the proposals, revealed in a leaked government document tabled in the Senate on Tuesday. In one option, AI companies would gain the right to access and train models on any unprotected online material as long as they made deals with enough businesses. In another, AI companies would do deals with creatives’ rights holder organisations that grant broad access to their category of content, such as music or text, across the many different small creators within that industry. Alternatively, companies would pay a yet-to-be established central body that distributes payment to “registered” rights holders. Industry bodies are concerned companies could have full access while creatives miss out on being paid. Harrison says there’s even less of a chance of any payment for all the Australians whose social media posts could end up in AI model training.

3. Loss of access to overseas content?Overseas creators would have the option to block Australian access to their music and videos if AI companies were granted sweeping access to content here. Authors and musicians internationally have blocked efforts to train AI using their content. The UK government rejected the types of reforms now being considered in Australia after artists including Elton John and Paul McCartney fought to prevent their work ending up in AI models. In the US, Anthropic is defending a multibillion-dollar lawsuit over alleged theft of “tens of thousands” of songs and spent US$1.5bn settling a case over its use of 482,000 books from a pirated database. It’s not clear whether the government’s specific proposals would give AI companies free access to foreign nationals’ work distributed in Australia. But the CEO of the Australian Copyright Council, Eileen Camilleri, says Australian copyright law covers all content distributed here, physically and digitally. Some TV show streamers already geo-block Australia as licensing restrictions prevent the shows from being legally streamed. Camilleri said artists or their publishers could use geo-blocking technology to cut off Australian viewers, readers and listeners if they were worried about AI access. “Back in the analogue days … you had book publishers and record companies wanting to control distribution by territory,” Camilleri said. “The way to do that in the digital world is by putting those geo-blocks in place.”

4. AI companies’ profits boostedThe proposals document says reforms would give AI companies “legal certainty” and a solution to accessing the vast number of small creators’ content where “striking voluntary deals is not realistic/possible”. They would still have to pay for high-level deals with organisations and businesses to secure lawful access to the content, but would be off the hook for lots of small deals with individual creators and owners. AI companies would be free from the costs of lawsuits, which risk hitting their bottom line. Pullen, who is contributing to the government-hosted negotiations, says the governments’ options resemble the model AI companies are asking for. The AI companies are claiming a deal is urgent and the government is expected to put forward legislation in the next few months. Pullen says creators don’t see the urgency and the rush is more likely to be due to AI companies’ pending sharemarket debuts, where they will want to raise the maximum amount of cash. “If it was urgent, do a deal,” Pullen says. AI companies could do deals and train their models under Australia’s existing copyright rules, Pullen says. No companies are striking deals while the negotiations for reform are under way.

5. AI invests in Australia, maybeBig tech has talked up Australia’s potential as a home for AI investment, with political stability, strategic position in the Pacific and abundant land and natural resources. OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, has singled out copyright law as the major barrier to it investing in training models here in Australia. With a way around that barrier, companies may become willing to put their money where their mouth is and bring AI capacity here. Andrew Charlton, the assistant technology minister, has said Australia needs to get onboard as the US and China race to develop highly capable AI. “Australia doesn’t have an off switch for this,” Charlton told News24 on Tuesday. “The alternative to having datacentres in Australia is that Australians’ data is hosted abroad … [and] we are reliant on tokens and artificial intelligence from overseas. “If that is all abroad, and we have none of it here, we are in a very vulnerable situation.” Copyright reform would not ensure the companies even significantly invest here. AI training does not equate to local data storage or any involvement in frontier model development. OpenAI and Anthropic declined to comment on Wednesday when asked whether the leaked proposals would be enough to convince them to commit to Australia. OpenAI’s vice-president, Ann O’Leary, said in Canberra on Monday the company was in “deep” conversation with the government about copyright. “The last thing that a company built on human knowledge wants is for human knowledge to stop, and for people not to have the creative ability and economic means to be creative,” she said.