On Monday, Michelle Rowland, the attorney general of Australia, confirmed the federal government’s decision preventing tech companies from utilizing text and data mining in order to train artificial intelligence models. The decision comes after a group of tech companies advocated for a change in Australia’s Copyright Act, as reported by Billboard. The decision is a win for musicians, writers, artist, and other creatives.
The rejected proposal was initially presented to the Australian government’s Productivity Commission in August, in a report titled “Harnessing Data and Digital Technology.” The report estimated that AI could deliver a $116 billion boost to the economy over a decade, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
“We are making it very clear that we will not be entertaining a text and data mining exception,” Rowland told ABC’s morning news show, AM, on Monday.
The proposal faced immediate backlash from a wide range of Australian creatives, from First Nations rapper Adam Briggs and author Anna Funder to the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Australian Recording Industry Association, according to the Guardian.
None were swayed by pro-AI and anti-copyright arguments from tech executives like Scott Farquhar, a cofounder of the software company Atlassian and currently chair of the Tech Council of Australia. In an address to the National Press Club in July, Farquhar described himself as a “tech optimist” and advocated for changes in the country’s copyright laws to be more like those in the United States and Europe, which “have fair use exceptions for text and data mining.”
Fixing this, he argued, “could unlock billions of dollars of foreign investment into Australia.” For now, at least, those billions of dollars will have to come at the expense of someone other than Australian creators and their hard-earned copyright.
