Source : Perth Now news
Some of Australia’s best known writers and performers are calling on the federal government not to allow copyright exemptions for AI companies.
Musicians including Mark Seymour, William Barton, Paul Dempsey and Mahalia Barnes, and authors such as Anna Funder and Andy Griffiths are meeting at Parliament House in Canberra on Wednesday.
The IT industry has pushed for text and data mining exemptions to copyright laws, which require artists’ consent and remuneration for the use of their creative works.
AI technology is trained on huge amounts of data, and a dataset search tool recently created by US publication The Atlantic reveals millions of creative works have been scraped from the internet to train AI – a practice known as slurping.
It includes countless songs from the Australian songbook, with tunes by the likes of Nick Cave, Jimmy Barnes, and Kylie Minogue.
IT companies could licence these works under existing laws, but are instead lobbying to change the rules, said Nicholas Pickard from music licensing organisation APRA AMCOS.
“Canberra Airport is as busy as Central Station, it’s flight after flight … you’ve got Open AI coming in, you’ve got Microsoft, Google, the Tech Council,” he said.
“So far we haven’t had a single knock on the door from these platforms, even to investigate what a licensing arrangement might look like.”
The federal government ruled out changes to Australia’s current copyright regime in October.
In June, independent senator David Pocock aired claims in parliament that Labor is considering a fresh set of carve-outs, but the government labelled the claims as reckless speculation.
Worldwide, almost 300 commercial AI licensing deals have been agreed with content companies such as Conde Nast and Warner Music.
At the same time, about 270 court cases are under way against AI firms in various jurisdictions, but there are as yet no copyright infringement cases against AI companies recorded in Australian courts.
