ICMP Warns Australia Over AI Copyright Rollback as 62 Countries Resist Tech Demands
Updated
Updated · The Guardian · Oct 19
ICMP Warns Australia Over AI Copyright Rollback as 62 Countries Resist Tech Demands
1 articles · Updated · The Guardian · Oct 19
Summary
ICMP said AI models have already trained on Australian artists’ work without payment and warned Canberra not to weaken copyright law under pressure from tech companies seeking broader training access.
Evidence cited by the music-rights body included Google Gemini reproducing lyrics from Kylie Minogue, G-Flip and Nick Cave, plus a reported dataset of more than 12 million songs pulled from YouTube.
A parliamentary AI committee this week urged the government to examine copyright settings while preserving creator control and payment, arguing frontier AI firms may be withholding training in Australia under current rules.
Anthropic and OpenAI have argued Australia’s law makes large-scale training legally risky or impractical, while ICMP says no other country among 62 it tracked has created a new commercial text-and-data-mining exception.
The dispute leaves Australia under global scrutiny as creative industries warn any statutory workaround for AI training could undercut licensing norms and reshape copyright policy beyond music.