The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA) has called for laws mandating AI companies to compensate publishers for using their content to train AI models during a Senate Select Committee on Adopting Artificial Intelligence and said that the emerging technology is an “existential” threat to the creative industries.
“We’re not opposed to AI as such… AI is being used already to drive super profits for producers, platforms off the back of the cultural workforce, musicians, performers, journalists, crew, filmmakers but also communities and audiences by turning them into quasi-producers themselves…” said Paul Davies, the Union’s campaigns director.
“The effect of AI on the workforce as an exploitative tool is one thing. But its effect on our culture, as a means for withering our culture, for dehumanising our culture, for attacking the generational production and reproduction of our culture is hugely worrying to us.”
However, when pressed by Senators, Matt Byrne the Union’s political lead, said it was too early to suggest a framework for the laws that could be passed to protect and pay creatives. However, he did not that Australia had very strong copyright laws which could be used as a basis.
Tawar Razhagi, media member for the MEAA and Sydney Morning Herald journalist, said that under existing copyright laws, she receives a payment at the end of the year when her work is reused but that there was no framework for AI companies scraping websites and using her articles.
Senators suggested that while the “theft” of content — whether a journalist’s writing or a voiceover artist’s speech — was doubtless bad for the creatives involved, there was little that could be done at present.
NSW Greens Senator David Shoebridge said that Australia had “no jurisdiction” over data centres based in California, for instance. Davies, fired back, saying that as the content was created in Australia and therefore Australian laws should apply to it.
Shoebridge said that there seemed to be “competing public interests” when it came to AI. Namely, the need for comprehensive datasets — particularly if Australia is going to create a sovereign large language model (LLM) — and the need to pay creators.
“There’s a sovereign interest in creating a LLM with Australian characteristics but all of the data and the input has large barriers around it, making it hard to produce,” said Shoebridge.
Byrne, however, questioned whether it would even be “feasible” to create an Australian LLM, given it would need to run on servers owned and run by an American company, giving Amazon as an example, and would need to be based on an American company’s technology.
“Australia doesn’t have the capacity to produce that,” Byrne said.
“We’re not trying to wind back the technological development. If there’s an LLM that can be feasibly established as you say, it should be based on fair compensation for the content,” added Davies.
Byrne then pointed to international consensus around copyright — “Why can’t the same be done for AI?” he said.
Shoebridge suggested that an “AI tax” could be created, with content created by AI sourced from Australian creatives being taxed as it enters the market. The proceeds from this tax, suggested Shoebridge, could be fed back into the creative industries.
The notion that AI companies should compensate content producers has been something of a hot-button issue for many in the media and creative sectors. In May, OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT signed a deal with News Corp which allow OpenAI to use data from News Corp’s range of publications in exchange for $US250 million over the next five years.
However, just a week after that deal was announced, it emerged that News Corp was engaged in legal action against an anonymous AI firm.
Earlier today, B&T spoke to a range of creatives and industry professionals to show off the good and the bad of AI. Needless to say, it seems unlikely that anything concrete will happen soon.
