Australia’s media and creative industries have taken their fight over AI straight to Parliament, warning AI developers if they don’t pay for the content they use they risk collapsing the journalism and creative industries that supply it.
During the Canberra event, Powering Intelligence: Media, Culture and the Future of Innovation, at Australian Parliament House in industry leaders warned policymakers that the current trajectory, where AI models are trained on vast swathes of content, cannot continue without clear, enforceable licensing.
They argued that without it, the pipelines powering journalism, music, publishing and screen will be stripped back.
Coming together was a group of politicians, policy advisers and senior figures from across the media and creative economy. Backed by organisations including APRA AMCOS, Australian Publishers Association, Free TV Australia, News Corp Australia and The Guardian Australia, the industry fronted up to argue licensing must be enforced and not undermined.
Moderated by Claire Harvey, editorial director of The Australian, the panel brought together global and local players across music, publishing and tech. Jonathan Dworkin pointed to deals between Universal Music Group and platforms like Spotify and Nvidia as evidence the market is already moving.
“We didn’t defeat piracy by turning off the internet,” he said. “We prevailed because better products were built. That’s what we hope to do with AI.”
For publishers however, the warning was more direct.
Rebecca Costello, managing director of The Guardian Australia, said allowing AI companies to take content without payment is not just unfair – it’s unsustainable.
“When that work is taken and used without compensation, the impact is fewer journalists, fewer newsrooms and less public interest journalism,” she said. “No market operates when you can take something for free and then charge for it.”
The intervention comes at a critical policy moment. Australia has already rejected a broad text and data mining exception, effectively forcing AI developers to seek permission to use copyrighted material. Attorney-General Michelle Rowland doubled down on that position, saying the government has “no plans to weaken copyright protections when it comes to AI.”
Internationally, momentum is shifting in the same direction. The United Kingdom has stepped back from its own TDM push, while major tech firms are rapidly locking in licensing agreements – from deals between Google and AAP to partnerships involving OpenAI, The Guardian and News Corp.
Beyond economics, creatives warned of what’s at stake culturally if the model isn’t fixed. Charlie Chan said the industry risks sliding into a “homogenised” output if original work is endlessly scraped and repurposed.
“Australia has something truly unique – a thousand generations of First Nations culture – and we have a responsibility to protect it,” they said.
Edward Santow from the Human Technology Institute said the government must step in to ensure a functioning market and rebuild public trust.
“Australians have among the lowest levels of trust in the world when it comes to AI, not because we are scared of technology – the opposite, we tend to be among the earliest adopters – but because people can see when technology goes wrong,” he said.
