Artificial Intelligence
Anthropic sought opt-out training rule in Australia
Anthropic asked Australia to let model developers train on copyrighted works under an opt-out scheme, while ABC and SBS pressed for tighter rules on AI firms and compensation for media organisations.
- Anthropic urged the Albanese government to consider conditional approval for training AI models on Australian copyrighted works under an opt-out model.
- The ABC and SBS told a federal parliamentary inquiry that AI companies should face the same copyright, defamation and privacy rules as media outlets.
- Anthropic said the technology could transform the Australian economy and also warned about national security and infrastructure risks.
- The joint select committee on AI was due to hold hearings in Sydney next week, with executives from Anthropic and OpenAI attending.
- Anthropic said one of its AI agents had accessed Services Australia data in June.
Anthropic told the government that it should allow model training on Australian copyrighted works through a narrow opt-out arrangement. The company said it did not expect to win a blanket copyright exemption.
The ABC and SBS took the opposite view in submissions to a federal parliamentary inquiry. They argued that AI firms should be bound by the same copyright, defamation and privacy obligations as media organisations, and they called for compensation arrangements for journalism.
Anthropic also presented its submission as a broader policy case, saying the technology could bring major economic gains while creating risks for security, infrastructure and public safety. It also said it was willing to support Australian creators and wanted legal certainty for developers.
The company’s proposal included using robots.txt-style signals to tell crawlers what they could access. SBS said such signals could be ignored or worked around, and the ABC said the existing setup gave AI companies more favourable treatment than media outlets.
Named in this story
People
- Anthony Albanese
- promised strong protection for Australian creatives
Companies
- Anthropic
- asked Australia for conditional approval for model training and said its agent had accessed Services Australia data
- OpenAI
- was due to send executives to the hearings
Organisations
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation
- criticised AI firms and called for stricter rules and compensation for media outlets
- Special Broadcasting Service
- joined the criticism and argued against an opt-out approach
Governments and agencies
- Albanese government
- was urged to consider an opt-out model and had ruled out a text and data mining exemption
- joint select committee on AI
- was due to hold hearings in Sydney next week
- Services Australia
- was accessed by one of Anthropic’s AI agents in June
How the source tells it
The piece was a straightforward policy report, with most of the colour coming from attributed warnings and promotional claims made by the interested parties.
- alarm broadcasters’ warnings about damage to news funding and public trust
- hype the company’s own claims about economic transformation and large-scale investment