In a rush to lure AI companies, the Australian government risks undoing a creative ecosystem that has taken decades to build | Dan Guthrie

Australia and the UK have always had a shared love of creativity. We consume each other’s TV, news, music and books. Our chefs appear on each other’s TV channels and quite frankly I was bereft when the ABC’s The Newsreader ended its run in the UK.

That shared love though, appears not to be reciprocated by the Australian government. Its rush to attract AI investment from big US tech, and the extreme copyright reforms that it believes need to go along with it, threatens a creative ecosystem that has taken decades to build.

The Albanese government’s proposed reforms would give US big tech unrestricted access to Australian and international content. This would allow AI companies to get access to everything Australians and their global fellow creators create online under an “opt out” model.

We have been there in the UK. Our government had a similar idea. It believed it could attract AI investment and deliver copyright reform at no cost to the UK creative sector. This is not a zero-sum game. Weaken copyright and you weaken the creative industries. There is a massive trade-off. A one off, short-term investment will damage the potential of the creative sectors for future generations.

We know our colleagues in the Australian creative economy are incredibly worried, and so they should be. The ability to decline a transaction is a fundamental feature of any functioning market. If a seller cannot realistically say no, their ability to negotiate a fair price is significantly diminished. The same principle applies to creative works. By requiring creators to make their works available unless they successfully opt out (which they can’t, as opt-outs don’t work in practice), the proposal risks weakening both creators’ rights and the market value of their work. Experience in the European Union suggests that opt-out systems are failing at scale.

There is more at stake, though. If Australia goes ahead with its reforms it would become the global IP-laundering paradise of creative content. Why would a UK creative business license its TV shows in Australia if they can be scraped at will? Why would a global news publisher syndicate its news into Australia? That would mean less investment in Australia and less choice for Australians, and put Australia at odds with many of its international treaty commitments. It could also fuel piracy, exposing Australians to malware.

This doesn’t mean we are anti-AI. In fact, we are the opposite. The UK’s creative sector is one of the most advanced adopters of AI. We want that to be responsible adoption, though. We also want sovereign AI capabilities to ensure we can protect national security, but that doesn’t happen by being a vassal of US big tech. National security begins with economic security, and throwing the creative sector under the bus doesn’t do that.

The solution is for AI firms to license the content that their models don’t work without. They buy electricity. They buy talent. They buy water. Why should content be the only thing they get for free? Large AI firms are shopping around the world trying to sell their snake oil and the price is copyright reform. International creative businesses are looking at Australia and cannot believe the government has been duped, as the UK government so nearly was.

We urge the Australian government to slow down, to look in more detail at the economics of what they are proposing and choose an Australian way, rather than one dictated by US tech. Maybe then we might even get that elusive fourth series of The Newsreader.

• Dan Guthrie is the director general of the Alliance for Intellectual Property in the UK