Australia Mulls Legalizing AI Training; Opponents Urged to Sign Protest
copyright training
| Source: Mastodon | Original article
Australia may legalize AI training on books without authors' consent, prompting the Authors Guild to launch a statement urging opposition.
Australia’s government is poised to amend copyright law so that AI firms can train large language models on books stored on Australian servers without the authors’ permission. The draft legislation would effectively legalise the exploitation of copyrighted works on Australian soil, allowing companies to sidestep existing lawsuits by relocating their data‑mining operations to the country.
The move has triggered a coordinated response from the Authors Guild, which has launched an online statement urging writers to oppose the change. The petition, hosted on the guild’s website, frames the proposal as a “theft” of creators’ rights and calls for a broad coalition of authors, publishers and cultural organisations to sign the appeal.
The proposal matters because Australia’s current copyright framework offers only narrow “fair dealing” exemptions for research and study, and does not permit large‑scale text and data mining (TDM) for AI training without explicit consent. If enacted, the law would pre‑empt the growing wave of litigation that has seen authors and media groups challenge AI companies over unlicensed data harvesting. It would also create a regulatory haven that could attract AI firms seeking to sidestep stricter regimes elsewhere, potentially reshaping the global geography of model training.
What to watch next is whether the draft survives parliamentary scrutiny. Lawmakers are likely to face pressure from both the creative sector, which has recently rallied for stricter protections, and the tech industry, which argues that broader data access fuels innovation. The government’s recent declaration that unlicensed AI training is “theft,” alongside the establishment of a new Office of AI, suggests a possible reversal, but the final outcome will hinge on the balance of lobbying, public sentiment and the broader debate over how to reconcile copyright with rapid AI development.
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