Australian Artists Whose Music Trained AI Without Compensation
Artificial intelligence models have already trained on the works of Australian artists including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave without compensation, according to the International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP). The peak global body for music rights revealed the data ingestion as the Australian government faces warnings against giving in to “strong-arming” from tech companies seeking to weaken copyright law. John Phelan, the ICMP’s managing director, told Guardian Australia that AI companies were asking policymakers to “legitimise larceny”.
Global Music Industry Warns Against Weakening Copyright Laws
The ICMP—which represents Sony, Warner and Universal as well as thousands of independent publishers on six continents—has tracked how AI companies are attempting to change copyright law in different jurisdictions to allow training. Phelan stated that 62 countries had considered making their own legal changes but none of the others had bought into AI companies’ demands, and Australia appears to be the only one to consider doing so. Phelan warned that the global music industry is appalled by the idea of a statutory scheme or a government deal which would interfere with how industries work and contract around the world. In July, Anthony Albanese said it would be “theft” if artists did not retain control over whether their work was used to build and train AI, and what they were paid for its use. Guardian Australia said in a submission to the inquiry that undermining copyright protection would have a “profound impact on civil society”.
🚨 BREAKING: Australian Artists Raise Alarm Over AI Voice TrainingMajor Australian artists, including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave, have raised concerns that their voices may have been scraped and used to train AI systems without their permission.The artists are calling for… pic.twitter.com/VSOCj9FRvO
Evidence of AI Training on Australian Repertoire
A key claim of the AI industry is that its models are not trained on Australian content due to copyright rules. However, in evidence provided exclusively to Guardian Australia, ICMP showed Google’s Gemini was able to reproduce lyrics from Australian artists including Kylie Minogue, G-Flip and Nick Cave. Furthermore, an AI training dataset reported by the Atlantic in June contains more than 12m songs pulled from YouTube videos, including tracks from Minogue, Cave and Hilltop Hoods. Phelan highlighted methods that the companies had used to train their models on music, such as with spreadsheets containing millions of lines of music available on YouTube.
Parliamentary Committee Recommends Examining Copyright Settings
A parliamentary committee on artificial intelligence described the current situation as a stalemate, noting that without changes to local copyright laws, companies were withholding training frontier AI models in Australia. In a joint letter to the prime minister, the inquiry’s Labor chair, Jo Briskey, and its deputy chair, Jonathon Duniam, recommended the government “examine current copyright settings” while ensuring creators retain control and are paid. David Pocock has raised concerns that the committee was coming to a position on copyright predetermined by the prime minister, after staffer edits were seen in the letter. Briskey has rejected the claim. Anthropic’s special envoy, Jeffrey Bleich, told the AI committee last week the company was not trying to dictate terms, but had shared information with the Australian government about training. OpenAI’s chief of economic policy, Adam Cohen, said the fair use exception in US law “fundamentally protects” the development of new technology and pointed to agreements made with News Corp and the Guardian as examples of where the company makes deals for the use of work.
Frequently Asked Questions About AI Copyright Stalemates
Which Australian artists have been identified in AI training datasets?
Evidence shared by the ICMP and reporting from the Atlantic established that songs and lyrics from Kylie Minogue, Nick Cave, G-Flip, and Hilltop Hoods were included in datasets utilized to train AI systems.
How many countries have altered their copyright laws for AI companies?
According to ICMP managing director John Phelan, 62 countries had considered making their own legal changes but none of the others had bought into AI companies’ demands, and Australia appears to be the only one to consider doing so.
What arguments have AI firms presented to the Australian parliamentary inquiry?
Representatives from Anthropic and OpenAI informed the parliamentary committee that they had shared information about training and implications with respect to their capacity to operate in Australia, with OpenAI arguing that the fair use exception in US law protects technology development.
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