{"id":288400,"date":"2026-07-11T16:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/11\/ai-companies-want-to-water-down-australias-copyright-laws-artists-are-outraged-labor-is-split-ai-artificial-intelligence\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T16:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T20:50:10","slug":"ai-companies-want-to-water-down-australias-copyright-laws-artists-are-outraged-labor-is-split-ai-artificial-intelligence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/11\/ai-companies-want-to-water-down-australias-copyright-laws-artists-are-outraged-labor-is-split-ai-artificial-intelligence\/","title":{"rendered":"AI companies want to water down Australia\u2019s copyright laws. Artists are outraged, Labor is split | AI (artificial intelligence)"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI companies want to water down Australia\u2019s copyright laws. Artists are outraged, Labor is split | AI (artificial intelligence)<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2026\/jul\/12\/ai-australia-will-labor-water-down-copyright-laws-datacentres<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-07-11 16:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com<\/a><\/p>\n

When Anna Funder stood before a pack of journalists at Parliament House earlier this month, she presented herself not just as a writer but also a \u201cvictim of crime\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Stasiland author was using the analogy to illustrate how technology companies have flagrantly \u201choovered up\u201d her literary works for their own profit.<\/p>\n

Funder was also highlighting the importance of copyright laws in providing at least some layer of protection to Australians whose livelihoods depend on the original content they produce.<\/p>\n

Authors, artists, musicians and media organisations were last year assured those laws wouldn\u2019t be watered down when the federal government ruled out granting a legal exemption for artificial intelligence companies to mine content to train their large language models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.<\/p>\n

But continual lobbying from tech giants and a whistleblower\u2019s tip-off to the independent senator David Pocock have ignited fears that the Albanese government might go back on its word \u2013 even as it continues to insist that it won\u2019t.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Author Anna Funder at Parliament House. Labor ministers have been split on the path forward for copyright reform.<\/span> Photograph: Lukas Coch\/AAP<\/p>\n

The stoush has exposed splits within Labor about how to respond to AI and raised questions about how far the government should bend \u2013 if at all \u2013 to big tech to capture the supposed riches of the datacentre boom.<\/p>\n

Ministers divided<\/h2>\n

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, is expected to deliver a major speech on Wednesday about the government\u2019s plans for regulating and capitalising on the nascent technology.<\/p>\n

After abandoning former industry minister Ed Husic\u2019s vision for a dedicated AI act in favour of a hands-off approach to regulation, the government is reportedly set to pivot back to a more interventionist strategy.<\/p>\n

A concrete announcement on changes to copyright laws is not anticipated as part of Albanese\u2019s address, which Guardian Australia has been told will be more vision…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AI companies want to water down Australia\u2019s copyright laws. Artists are outraged, Labor is split…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":288401,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/22ada131c2cb310491b0adad1a133e8a5cada2c6\/255_557_4171_3337\/master\/4171.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&precrop=40:21,offset-x50,offset-y0&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=3198d4788a2109c3310713822129091e","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-288400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288400"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=288400"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":288402,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/288400\/revisions\/288402"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/288401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=288400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=288400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=288400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}