Your photos, your words and your work: will Labor make it easier for AI companies to take them for free?

Every family photo you ever posted would be fair game for AI companies unless you choose to opt out

Leaked documents from a government proposal show that the Albanese government is considering reversing the fundamental rights of Australians under copyright law.

The proposal refers to an “opt-out model”. This would give AI companies permission to train on the open internet here in Australia. Every family photo you ever posted, every small business website, every website would be fair game for AI companies unless you choose to opt out.

Right now, under Australian law, a company has to ask for permission if it wants to use your content. This proposal would mean it doesn’t. It would put the onus on the individual to opt out – through a mechanism that hasn’t yet been proven to work. And it would give AI companies rights to your content until you choose to say no. This flips the legal burden on to the individual. It means that our legal system would serve the interests of AI companies first.

AI companies have scraped on billions of pieces of content globally to train their models. There are more than 200 cases live around the world in which writers, journalists, artists, record labels and publishers are seeking to prove that this training is illegal. Just last year the UK decided to hold firm on copyright law when faced with similar pressure from AI companies – artists including Elton John, Dua Lipa and Paul McCartney led a national campaign to say “no way” – and their government listened.

Artists are at the forefront of this fight as we protect the value that underpins our profession. But this isn’t just about us. This is about protecting the rights of all people to keep their right to decide how their content – their photos, their websites, their written word – is used by AI companies.

Right now, chief executives including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei and Elon Musk are begging for global regulation of their technology to prevent the apocalypse. Copyright law is a part of that regulation. It protects individuals and their property. Every other industry, sector, company and individual has to ask for permission before using an individual’s work – trillion-dollar AI companies must do the same.

If the most powerful companies in the world can’t properly licence the content they are training on, or if they can’t create the technology to license their training content properly, we must seriously question their technical and civil competency. They can solve diseases, fight wars, they might kill us all, but they can’t licence the content that makes their model “intelligent” in the first place? Seriously.

Talk about self-control, regulation and “needing governments to step in” – well, copyright law is a start. Everyone else in our society abides by copyright law – we don’t steal other peoples stuff. We ask them permission to use it.

If the Albanese government and the Coalition are requesting that the Australian people weaken their own rights for the benefit of the world’s biggest technology companies, they must explain the benefit transparently to Australians.

Giving AI companies access to every piece of content that Australians have shared online without their permission or consent is a matter of grave concern for national security itself.

The Albanese government must put this to the Australian people – do Australians want to let AI companies train on every piece of content they have ever put online, without permission and consent? Or do Australians want the government to be a global leader and force AI companies to train their models legally and with the consent of the people?