Australia’s AI Copyright Fight Is Really About Who Sets the Price

OpenAI and Anthropic have asked Australia to reconsider its position on using copyrighted creative work to train artificial intelligence. In September submissions to a parliamentary inquiry, both companies sought a narrower route than the broad text and data mining exception the government has rejected, according to Reuters’ September 22 report. Their proposals put a familiar promise on the table: investment and innovation in exchange for easier access to the work that makes powerful models possible.

That exchange cannot be evaluated as a simple choice between technology and culture. A copyright exception would change the default legal position for rightsholders. A negotiated license would ask who may use a work, for what purpose and on what terms. A conditional approval scheme might sit somewhere between those models, but its value to creators would depend on the conditions actually written into it.

Canberra’s red line

Australia’s attorney-general said in October 2025 that the government was not considering a text and data mining exception. In a July 2026 interview Michelle Rowland repeated that decision and said the government would not trade away Australian rightsholders’ control and payment. That is a stated policy position, not a final answer to every question about AI training.

The Attorney-General’s Department has instead identified licensing arrangements, the treatment of AI-generated material and less costly enforcement of output-related infringement as areas for work with its Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Reference Group. The distinction matters. Rejecting a blanket exception still leaves room to design lawful access, but the design has to be explicit about who controls the transaction.

Australia’s Parliament House in Canberra. Photo: Kgbo / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (2022); no changes. Image and license · CC BY-SA 4.0

The investment argument

Reuters reported that Anthropic proposed a narrow form of conditional approval and said it would consider conditions supporting Australian creators and cultural activity. OpenAI called for a framework that allows models to learn from publicly available information while offering rightsholders ways to collaborate. Both companies pointed to Australian data center projects as part of the policy discussion. These are company positions reported from their submissions, not an agreed government plan.

Investment in computing infrastructure may bring jobs and capacity. It does not, by itself, answer the copyright question. A data center and a book, image, recording or news article are different assets with different owners. If access to the latter is part of the bargain, policymakers should be able to say how creators authorize that access, how they are paid and how they challenge uses that fall outside the agreed terms.

A workable bargain needs evidence

Transparency is the practical hinge. A creator who cannot discover whether a work entered a training dataset has little ability to exercise a right, bargain over a license or test a disputed use. The department’s copyright and AI reference group has examined both AI inputs and transparency. Its consultations show that the government recognizes the information problem, even though they have not yet supplied a comprehensive public settlement.

The National Library of Australia in Canberra. Photo: Kgbo / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (2022); no changes. Image and license · CC BY-SA 4.0

Any new framework would also need to distinguish kinds of rightsholders. A large publisher may have the records and leverage to negotiate at scale; an individual photographer or musician may not. That is an editorial inference from the structure of licensing, not a description of a proposal already adopted in Australia. A credible policy would make the terms intelligible to both, rather than counting an investment announcement as compensation for creative labor.

Australia’s debate therefore reaches beyond the question of whether AI companies can train locally. It asks who gets to set the price of culture when the buyer needs millions of works and the sellers range from major institutions to single artists. The parliamentary inquiry is still considering the issue. Until a concrete mechanism is public, claims that a narrow exception protects creators should be judged by its actual rules on consent, payment, disclosure and enforcement.