Speaker 1: To be honest on here a little or lucktont we
Speaker 1: Over my career, I've always preferred doing rather than talking,
Speaker 1: building things, solving problems, creating new new ventures, not giving
Speaker 1: speeches about them.
Speaker 2: A few weeks ago, at Lassian co founder and one
Speaker 2: of Australia's wealthiest men, Scott Parquha addressed the Press Club.
Speaker 1: But I'm here today because I believe Australia is standing
Speaker 1: at the edge of the next great industrial revolution, one
Speaker 1: powered to not by steam or electricity, but by artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: And like every revolution before it, the choices we make
Speaker 1: now will shape not just our economy, but the kind
Speaker 1: of country that we become.
Speaker 2: Singing the praises of the economic opportunity of artificial intelligence,
Speaker 2: Parqua called on the government to loosen the rules allowing
Speaker 2: AI models to train themselves using creative works without paying
Speaker 2: for it. Now, as the Treasurer and the Productivity Commission
Speaker 2: talk about the potential billions AI could produce, there are
Speaker 2: questions about what it will mean for the future of
Speaker 2: creative work and journalism. I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening
Speaker 2: to seven am today. Principle at Good Company Law Hannah
Speaker 2: Marshall on the collision course between the AI art and
Speaker 2: the law. It's Friday, August fifteenth, Hannah. Let's begin our
Speaker 2: conversation about AI and the creative industries with what we're
Speaker 2: starting to see in terms of the broader impact on
Speaker 2: anyone who makes a living making any kind of art
Speaker 2: in Australia.
Speaker 3: The creative industries in Australia are on the cusp of
Speaker 3: crisis and we're seeing increasing outcry from all of thurs
Speaker 3: musicians and representatives of those industries about the fact that
Speaker 3: these AI companies are basically coming and using their content,
Speaker 3: deriving commercial value from that and not paying anything back
Speaker 3: to these creatives, so they're not seeing any outside even
Speaker 3: though their works are being used.
Speaker 4: Nearly eleven thousand creatives put their name to a letter
Speaker 4: that described the unauthorized use of their work by AI
Speaker 4: as and I quote major and an unjust threat.
Speaker 3: We're seeing groups like Creative Australia come out and say
Speaker 3: that they want to have principles for using their content
Speaker 3: in generative AI for it framed around fairness and the
Speaker 3: right to be remunerated. And we've also got prominent authors
Speaker 3: like Critchard Flanagan calling this the biggest act of copyright
Speaker 3: theft in history. His books, quite interestingly, were actually part
Speaker 3: of the trove of books which were the subject of
Speaker 3: a case against Meta in the US about whether they
Speaker 3: had infringed copyright in those books by using them to
Speaker 3: train their AI model.
Speaker 5: They accused Matter of illegally using their copyrighted works to
Speaker 5: train its flagship generative EI model. But instead of the
Speaker 5: declaration that Meta violated copyright law, the judge rule the
Speaker 5: plaintiff's arguments weren't strong enough to move forward.
Speaker 2: Odon And let's just spell out what is actually happening here.
Speaker 2: So we're talking about AI companies basically scouring works of literature, articles,
Speaker 2: news and using that material to train models to create
Speaker 2: better AI. Is that right?
Speaker 3: So when the AI model ingests content, there's an underlying
Speaker 3: technical question about whether it's making an actual copy of
Speaker 3: the copyright content in the learning process.
Speaker 6: Everyone tends to assume that it is.
Speaker 3: And none of the AI companies are kind of loudly
Speaker 3: coming out and saying that it doesn't. But that would
Speaker 3: be the precursor to the copyright infringement happening if it's
Speaker 3: not making a copy of it or reproducing a substantial
Speaker 3: part of the book or the song or whatever it
Speaker 3: is it's learning from, then there wouldn't be a copyright infringement.
Speaker 3: But we're not seeing that argument being seriously thrown out
Speaker 3: by the AI companies, and so for the most part,
Speaker 3: people are assuming that it must be some form of
Speaker 3: reproduction and therefore there's a potential for infringement absent some
Speaker 3: defense applying.
Speaker 2: And that, I suppose brings me to my next question.
Speaker 2: Is this breaking the law what these companies are doing
Speaker 2: or is this a gray area?
Speaker 3: A look, if it's reproducing it, then that's a copyright
Speaker 3: infringement unless a defense applies. And so that's kind of
Speaker 3: the bottom line. Under Australian law, we've got quite a
Speaker 3: narrow set of defenses, and so it's not clear that
Speaker 3: there is an obvious defense that the AI companies could
Speaker 3: rely on other than saying there was no infringement in
Speaker 3: the first place.
Speaker 2: So if that is the case, tell me a bit
Speaker 2: more than about how the AI companies are currently justifying
Speaker 2: what they're doing.
Speaker 3: So last week Scott Farqua, the co founder of Lassian,
Speaker 3: came out quite loudly saying that copyright laws in Australia
Speaker 3: are holding at the growth of an AI industry here
Speaker 3: and that we need to change the laws urgently to
Speaker 3: facilitate the growth of the industries.
Speaker 1: We remain an outlier when it comes to copyright, so
Speaker 1: this is a barrier to AI companies who want to
Speaker 1: train or host their models in Australia.
Speaker 3: Specifically, what he wants is a new exception to our
Speaker 3: copyright laws for text and data mining.
Speaker 1: So my first ask today of government is for the
Speaker 1: Attorney General to urgently amend our Copyright Act to work
Speaker 1: at fair use and text and data mining exceptions. Fixing
Speaker 1: this one thing could unlock billions of dollars of foreign
Speaker 1: investment in Australia.
Speaker 2: And just as Scott Farqua, who is a billionaire, called
Speaker 2: for looser rules, we have the Productivity Commission release a
Speaker 2: paper arguing for the same thing. So what is their
Speaker 2: case in favor of this?
Speaker 3: The Productivity Commission, we're very loud and clear on the
Speaker 3: money to be made in short and the jobs to
Speaker 3: be gained from a growing AI industry in Australia. They
Speaker 3: said it could boost productivity by between point five and
Speaker 3: thirty percent over the next decade, which could be hundreds
Speaker 3: of billions of dollars.
Speaker 6: So it's a.
Speaker 7: Lot Artificial intelligence is a game changer for our economy.
Speaker 7: It has the potential to support all of our major
Speaker 7: economic goals, making our economy more productive, stronger, lifting living
Speaker 7: standards over time.
Speaker 8: And Charmers came out last week as well talking about
Speaker 8: how artificial intelligence will completely transform our economy and he
Speaker 8: said that the government's intention is to regulate as much
Speaker 8: as is necessary to protect.
Speaker 3: Australians, but as little as possible to encourage innovation.
Speaker 7: The only way to make our people and workers and
Speaker 7: industries beneficiaries is if we treat AI as an enabler,
Speaker 7: not an enemy of what we want to see in
Speaker 7: our economy. That means listening to people.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting that the you know, when other governments
Speaker 3: are exploring and reporting on AI, for the most part,
Speaker 3: they're focusing on how do we minimize harm from the
Speaker 3: AI industry, whereas this report it's really talking about how
Speaker 3: do we take away the regulatory hurdles so that it's
Speaker 3: easier for the AI industry to come here and use
Speaker 3: our creative's content. I mean, there's this really strong common
Speaker 3: thread about the desire to unlock the benefits of the
Speaker 3: AI industry, and you know, the creative industries are understandably
Speaker 3: really concerned that they'll be railroaded in all of this
Speaker 3: excitement about AI jobs and money, and looking at it globally,
Speaker 3: what you can see is that it's really hard to
Speaker 3: strike the good balance between the opportunity of the industry
Speaker 3: which is undeniable, but also protecting creative industries. And the
Speaker 3: risk is that because it's hard to strike that balance,
Speaker 3: that it will be done badly or.
Speaker 6: Not at all.
Speaker 2: Coming up, authors versus the tech giants battle it out
Speaker 2: in court, Hannah, let's talk about how this is playing
Speaker 2: out in other countries, specifically the US, where a lot
Speaker 2: of these AAR companies are based. What are we seeing
Speaker 2: happen in court so over.
Speaker 3: In the US, they have a broad exception to copyright
Speaker 3: infringement for fair use, and that's been tested already in
Speaker 3: cases against Meta and Anthropic in relation to books. And
Speaker 3: it's the cases that I mentioned before, which included Richard Flanagan's.
Speaker 6: Works, and the issue there was.
Speaker 3: That a trove of one hundred and eighty five thousand
Speaker 3: books had been used to train the AI models, and
Speaker 3: you know, from the author's perspective, that was rampant example
Speaker 3: of copyright infringement applying the fair use defense in the US,
Speaker 3: the court ultimately decided that it wasn't a copyright infringement,
Speaker 3: and the reason was that it wouldn't impact the downstream
Speaker 3: sale of those books.
Speaker 6: So the AI.
Speaker 3: Models were in jesting the book content, but they weren't
Speaker 3: spitting it out again. So you couldn't go on to
Speaker 3: say chat GPT and say give me a copy of
Speaker 3: Richard Flannagan's latest book.
Speaker 6: It would say no. So because the training wasn't being.
Speaker 3: Used to create a copy of the work, the court's
Speaker 3: decision was that it wasn't an unfair use of their work,
Speaker 3: and as such, the copyright infringement claims fail.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if we are to accept the argument that
Speaker 2: AI might be using this intellectual property making money off it,
Speaker 2: but that doesn't necessarily impact someone still going ahead and
Speaker 2: buying it for themselves, how does that apply when we
Speaker 2: think about nonfiction, when we think about journalism and news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the analysis starts to change significantly when
Speaker 3: you look at nonfiction, but particularly news, because the value
Speaker 3: of those works is largely in the information they're conveying
Speaker 3: rather than necessarily the specific words used to do that.
Speaker 3: And so that means that, you know, using that US
Speaker 3: legal analysis in the books case, you might get a
Speaker 3: different outcome because if AI goes and ingests all of
Speaker 3: the seven am podcast library, all of the Sydney Morning Herald,
Speaker 3: it could spit out competing content and people could quite
Speaker 3: naturally use the AI tools to access and get news
Speaker 3: or nonfiction information from them in a way that does
Speaker 3: impact the market for the news publishers. And so that's
Speaker 3: the reason that I think AI is presenting almost an
Speaker 3: existential threat to the news industry.
Speaker 2: So, Hannah, if you wanted to both chase the economic
Speaker 2: opportunity of AI while protecting the creative industries, what do
Speaker 2: you think a good model that could do both would look.
Speaker 6: Like In terms of legal protections.
Speaker 3: At the moment in Australia, the current copyright laws do
Speaker 3: seem to create a degree of protection for creatives and
Speaker 3: that's what far Class A arguing against is that there
Speaker 3: does seem to be a standing assumption that there is
Speaker 3: an infringement in which case the AI companies have to
Speaker 3: buy a license. You know, that still seems like a
Speaker 3: reasonable outcome. If we were to go further though, and
Speaker 3: create a new law which mandates payment, that might add
Speaker 3: additional protection for the creative industry, but you would need
Speaker 3: to be really careful about unintended consequences, and we've seen
Speaker 3: that play out before with well intentioned legislation in the
Speaker 3: form of the News Media Bargaining Code. Because deals which
Speaker 3: facilitated payment by digital platforms through to the news companies
Speaker 3: were not transparent, they didn't cover the whole industry, they
Speaker 3: weren't renewed, and ultimately, to avoid being caught by the law,
Speaker 3: Meta exited the news industry and Australia altogether, which was a.
Speaker 6: Long way from the desired outcome of the law.
Speaker 3: People like Scott Farquha are saying Australia's copyright laws are
Speaker 3: a barrier to growth.
Speaker 6: Of the AI industry.
Speaker 3: But that hasn't really been examined in detail. I can't imagine,
Speaker 3: given the funding and the revenue of these massive AI companies,
Speaker 3: that the cost of licensing the content that they're ingesting
Speaker 3: would be crippling or prohibitive. Nobody's really spelled out in
Speaker 3: detail why the AI companies can't just pay for a license,
Speaker 3: and that's the thing that really strucks me about all
Speaker 3: of this.
Speaker 2: Anna, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, salmon farming and Tasmania's Marcory
Speaker 2: Harbor will continue. The Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt has
Speaker 2: confirmed environmental groups, including the Bob Brown Foundation, had lodged
Speaker 2: a request for the government to reconsider its twenty twelve
Speaker 2: decision to allow for the expansion of salmon farming, citing
Speaker 2: concerns about the impact on the endangered Morgians skate. In
Speaker 2: a letter to three environment groups, Minister Watt said his
Speaker 2: decision to allow salmon farming to continue had considered all
Speaker 2: the evidence and that the government is committed to protecting
Speaker 2: the endangered animal. And Donald Trump has threatened very severe
Speaker 2: consequences if Vladimir Putin doesn't agree to a cease fire
Speaker 2: at their upcoming meeting in Alaska. Speaking after a call
Speaker 2: with European leaders, including Ukrainian President FLOTMW. Zelenski and Britain's Kiirstarmer,
Speaker 2: President Trump said that if his meeting with Putin goes well,
Speaker 2: Hill followed up quickly with another the meeting, bringing together
Speaker 2: Putin and Zelenski. Trump earlier raised concerns when he said
Speaker 2: he would discuss land swapping with Putin Zelenski has ruled
Speaker 2: out seeding territory to Russia. Seven Am is a daily
Speaker 2: show from Softstice Media. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Chris Dengate,
Speaker 2: Daniel James, Sarah McPhee, Travis Evans, Zotenfetcho, and me Ruby Jones.
Speaker 2: Our theme music is by Nede Beckley and Josh Hogan
Speaker 2: of Envelope Budeo. Thanks for listening, have a great weekend,
Speaker 2: See you Monday.