How the government treats creatives on the front line of AI is how it will treat the rest of us. Our data. Our kids. Our work, and our jobs, writes Holly Rankin (aka Australian recording artist, Jack River).
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Today, Anthony Albanese gave a major speech on AI. It comes as the Prime Minister faces pressure and questions from communities across Australia about data centres being built in their backyard, about First Nation’s and artist’s rights, about energy, water, privacy and safety.
But this was as much a speech about power as it was about technology. AI isn’t just a technology in itself - it’s a product being peddled by the biggest technology companies on earth - and they’ve been lobbying the Government in unprecedented fashion to shape Australia’s adoption of AI in their favour, and into their bank accounts. The most consequential question of today is less about the technology itself, and more about who will shape the laws that govern it.
Today’s speech didn’t just set out the Prime Minister’s vision for AI as a technology; he genuinely signalled that Australia should shape its own laws -and that’s a good intention we should hold him to.
For Australian creatives, the Prime Minister uttered what might be some of the most important words in recent history: he said the use of Australian content in AI training without permission is ‘nothing less than theft’.
As an Australian recording Artist, the Prime Minister’s words are significant, and I hope they shape the law for generations to come. Let me tell you why. For the past year, my fellow Australian artists, First Nations leaders, authors, creators and I have been fighting tooth and nail to protect the Copyright Act from being weakened in the face of pressure and lobbying from the world’s biggest AI companies.
AI models like Claude and ChatGPT have been built on billions of pieces of stolen content. Books, songs, journalism, scripts, art, hoovered up from the internet without permission, and in documented cases, taken straight from pirated libraries. There are over 150 active court cases underway globally, brought by everyone from the New York Times to global music publishers, against technology companies like Anthropic, OpenAI and Google. Just last year in the US, Anthropic made a $1.5 billion settlement to authors whose work they had illegally trained on.
Here in Australia, those same companies have been openly and confidently lobbying the Australian Government to add a ‘text and data mining exception’ to our Copyright laws. This would have meant that they could train on content in Australia without gaining permission from the owner. A weakening of Australian law would not just affect Australian creators - it could allow technology companies to train on the world’s content without permission. Can you imagine what Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, Hollywood and the world’s artists, cultural leaders and authors would have thought of that? Yeah, nah.
While they lobbied, tech companies were buying social licence: sponsoring universities with credits, embedding themselves in the safety organisations meant to watch them, buying ad space across digital media. Every little ‘brought to you by’ making it a bit more normal to live alongside companies built on stolen Australian work.
The position we’ve been advocating for is: consent and control. We want AI companies to license the content they train on, and we know that it’s possible because it’s already happening - many AI companies are entering into licenses with major media, music and creative companies.
And this is the position the Prime Minister has affirmed today:
‘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. That includes the artist’s control of the price and value of their work. Anything less, is theft.’
The Prime Minister of Australia used the word theft - and not subtly. It was directed at the biggest companies in the world, who were sitting in the room. That sentence didn’t appear out of goodwill or by chance - Australian artists, writers, musicians, First Nations creators and journalists fought hard for it. For once, the rules got shaped by the people they are meant to protect.
The PM has made it clear that the Government intends to uphold Copyright law in the face of immense lobbying pressure to weaken it. But the devil is in the details: the speech focused heavily on attracting frontier models to Australia - the same companies he’s acknowledging have stolen Australian work without permission - and it pitched the new standards as delivering ‘clarity and speed’ and ‘streamlined’ compliance for international investors. Streamlined for who? And why? He also signalled changes to Copyright law as part of the development of ‘AI Standards’ - but the position of Australian creators is that there should be no change to the law.
The question communities around Australia must keep asking is: who is shaping our laws, and who will benefit from them? Big tech or everyday Australians?
When it comes to protecting our work, we already have an Australian Standard. It’s called the Copyright Act. How the government treats it - and the artists on the front line defending it - will be a litmus test for how other everyday Australians are valued in the PM’s new standards, from data centre approvals, to safety, to privacy and to workers.
In the months ahead, we will apply the PM’s own test - the one he set himself: will Australians control the use, the price and the value of their work? Anything that removes an Australian’s right to consent to how their work is used fails that test, however it’s dressed. By his own definition, it will be theft.
How the government treats creatives on the front line of AI is how it will treat the rest of us. Our data. Our kids. Our work and our jobs.
Actions speak louder than words - and this time, the words are on the record.
About the author
Holly Rankin is an artist and cultural leader working at the intersection of music, politics and public affairs. She creates music under the name Jack River and is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Sentiment Group.
The framing that creatives are the front line, not a special case, is the right one. The practical test of any of these commitments is whether they require a record of consent that a rights holder can actually produce later. Statements about respecting creators cost nothing. An auditable permission trail does, which is why it keeps getting left out.
The Labor MP's better not sell out like the PM & the cabinet. Time to use that majority to fight against the leader & actually stand up for people.