World media warns: Beware march of AI

Global media chiefs warn Australia's proposed AI copyright changes would "impoverish" the nation's cultural sector and threaten democracy.

Global media groups have admonished a push to amend Australia’s copyright laws. Picture: Martin Ollman

Amending Australia’s copyright laws to give AI companies unprecedented access to the intellectual property of journalists, musicians, artists, authors and other creative professionals would “impoverish” the nation’s cultural sector, undermine democracy and backfire on the economy, say the world’s leading media lobby groups.

The dire warnings from the European Publishers Council and the US-based News/Media Alliance come after the release last week of an interim report by the Productivity Commission, which put forward suggested changes to laws governing the use of copyrighted works.

The report called for feedback on the idea of a “fair dealing exception” that would allow AI companies to engage in “text and data mining” — the automated analysis of large volumes of text and data to identify patterns — which would be used in the training of AI models.

Under such a scenario, owners of the copyrighted material that would be subject to text and data mining would not be compensated for the harvesting and use of the content by the big tech industry.

The PC found that while the full effects of artificial intelligence on productivity were still uncertain, AI “will likely add more than $116bn to Australian economic activity over the next decade”. “It recommends an approach to regulation that limits the risks that AI presents without stifling its growth potential,” the report says.

Angela Mills Wade, executive director of the EPO — whose members include the chief executives of leading media groups across the continent — rubbished the idea that delivering improved copyright concessions for AI companies would significantly improve the long-term economic health of any country.

“Governments have drunk the Kool-Aid and think that somehow AI is going to solve productivity, and it’s going to increase economic growth. But there is no proof of that,” she said, adding that in many instances AI simply produces a cheaper, competing product, and in the case of journalism risks the ongoing viability of original, properly-researched content.

“If you take Gen-AI in particular, which is what we’re most concerned about, I think it’s fair to say that there has been great strides in medicine and science with AI and that outcomes (in those fields) are remarkable,” Ms Mills Wade told The Australian.

“But that’s not what we are talking about in terms of scraping the internet and stealing publishers’ content.”

Best-selling author Trent Dalton said recently he wanted to ‘vomit’ when he learned his books were being used to train Meta’s AI platform. Picture: Glenn Hunt

Ms Mills Wade said her “heart sank” when she learned of the proposals in the PC report pertaining to the training of AI models.

“Australia’s been so pioneering in its approach to dealing with the kind of asymmetry and lack of bargaining power that publishers have in their dealings with tech giants, so it was just really disappointing,” she said.

“Journalism is expensive to produce, and its survival depends on readers engaging directly with it and the publishers.

“This matter goes to the heart of what democracy is all about – if you only ever have AI output, which might itself be based on the original journalism, pretty soon there’ll be nobody to ask the difficult questions or to hold anybody to account.

“Society will be impoverished if there is no satisfactory solution to this. These AI companies pay for their telco costs, their energy costs, they pay their engineers … so why shouldn’t they pay for the content? The raw materials?”

Danielle Coffey, president and chief executive of the News/Media Alliance, which represents more than 2000 news media outlets worldwide, said governments across the globe should be wary of the tactics employed by AI companies and their pursuit of quality journalistic content.

“It would be a real shame if Australia was the first of the Western civilised countries to make a sweeping adjudication to blatantly make content available to AI companies for free, and in doing so undermine the integrity of the concept of intellectual property, which in some parts of the world has been a cherished ideal for hundreds of years,” she said.

“In the US, at least, some AI companies realise the value of quality content.

“Some have even shown that they are willing to pay for it because they don’t want to deplete that resource.

“They know you get what you pay for, and if it’s ‘garbage in’, then it will also be ‘garbage out’ when it comes to what they produce.

“They rely on it, and know what will happen if you don’t compensate the creators.

“But that said, even with some of the most sophisticated media companies who are very used to protecting themselves from theft, the AI bots are so devious that they disguise themselves. They come in through back doors.

“It is such a massive infestation of these parasites that are sucking up our content and we can’t even block them. It’s a whack-a-mole.”

Ms Coffey said the wider public supported the rights of copyright holders to retain ownership of their own work, and to be properly remunerated when it was used by others.

“If it was up to voters – which it should be, as governments are supposed to represent the people – they wouldn’t be siding with big tech,” she said. “People like movies, they like music, they like news and media … I don’t think they’d be happy if those things went away.”

The rules governing the use of text and data mining varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

In the UK, the practice of TDM is allowed for non-commercial use. Debate about expanding the rights of AI companies to use TDM for commercial use is ongoing, but as it stands, content cannot be used for commercial purposes if copyright holders have reserved their rights.

This year, various creative industries in the UK joined forces to form the Make It Fair campaign and lobbied the government against watering down copyright laws in favour of global tech firms.

In the EU, TDM for research and commercial use is allowed, with an “opt-out’ clause for rights holders. In the US, where copyright laws are stronger, there is an “opt-in” system in relation to TDM, with a legal requirement to prove that any use of such content is “fair use”.

Asked how she would advise the Australian government to proceed on the issue, Ms Mills Wade said: “I think they should look at what’s happened at the EU in terms of how the rights reservations are ignored, and bots routinely bypass rights reservations. There should be transparency.

“Ultimately, why would anyone take the risk of writing a book, a poem, making a life as a photographer or performing artist, if they could not rely on being paid for their work.

“There is no moral argument, and no economic argument, to allow AI to go unchecked, and there is no reason why these companies shouldn’t find ways to remunerate copyright holders.”