ARIA Warns Lawmakers That Australia Could Be Used as ‘Trojan Horse for Big AI’

SYDNEY, Australia — Weaken Australia’s copyright laws, ruin the future of the global music community and make the land down under an outcast.

That was the message from ARIA and PPCA CEO Annabelle Herd, who joined executives from trade associations representing writers and voice actors to address a parliamentary inquiry into AI.

Any changes to Australia’s Copyright Act to accommodate OpenAI and Anthropic “could make Australia the Trojan horse for Big AI – the global safe haven for industrial-scale copyright exploitation,” reads a statement from ARIA.

Australia has a trust issue with OpenAI and its rivals.

In June of this year, an autonomous OpenAI agent breached several government platforms, including Australia’s universal healthcare system, Medicare, a hack that security-experts are now saying was the first of its kind. Adding insult to injury, OpenAI only responded in September with a mea culpa that, many observers say, falls well short.

Speaking at the parliamentary hearing on Tuesday (Oct. 6) in Sydney, OpenAI’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon admitted the breach “should not have happened” and the tech company “should have handled our response better.” Three months passed before the hack was brought to light, which the business did by way of a five-paragraph email.

“We are sorry and we know we have work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people,” Kwon remarked. Reps from Anthropic, Microsoft and Google also attended the Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence.

The time for talk on trust has passed, reckons Herd.

“OpenAI and Anthropic want the Australian Government to sign up to a deal to train their frontier AI agents here on the proviso that they don’t have to abide by our copyright laws,” she explained.

For what outcome? “The world’s richest and most advanced companies say it would be too costly and complex to work with rights holders,” Herd continued.

“This concept that the status quo isn’t working is being used as an argument by AI companies to change our copyright law. You don’t address a systemic problem of mass piracy by changing the law to legalize that piracy on an ongoing basis.

Australia operates with a “very clear system where, if you can’t rely on a fair dealing exception, you can’t copy. The law is very certain,” Herd noted. The solution, the creative community insists with a unified voice, comes down to content licensing. 

“They should come to the negotiating table, not to the Prime Minister’s office,” Herd continued.

OpenAI is said to be in talks with the Australian government about hosting and training AI models in these parts.

ARIA and PPCA “are not against these companies doing their frontier training in Australia. We understand why that is beneficial, but it should happen on our terms, not theirs. There is nothing less sovereign than rewriting our laws to suit foreign company commercial interests,” warns Herd.

“Done the way that Big AI is proposing, it would devastate the music industry and make Australia a pariah for rights holders globally.”

OpenAI’s Kwon told the hearing CEO Sam Altman had not known about the breach when he met the nation’s deputy prime minister Richard Marles on Sept. 1, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, even though staff were aware of the situation weeks before. When asked to comment on why some polls reveal that most Australians don’t trust the technology, he remarked: “I can’t explain the current sentiment. All we can do is continue to get better.”