Australia’s AI copyright fight now has a datacentre price tag
The fight over Australia AI copyright has a price tag: tens of billions in datacentres. The prize for AI firms is the right to train on the country’s books, music and journalism. Australia has become the latest test of a question every government now faces. How much of a nation’s creative work can AI companies […] This story continues at The Next Web
Australia has become the latest test of a question every government now faces. How much of a nation’s creative work can AI companies train on, and at what price.
The answer is splitting the governing Labor party and drawing protests from authors and musicians. It is also, according to reporting by The Guardian , tempting ministers with the promise of a datacentre boom. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is due to set out his thinking in a major AI speech this week.
The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, killed a Productivity Commission proposal in October. She opened talks on alternatives, including a paid licensing model . Officially, the exemption is off the table.
The alleged sums: at least $50bn for datacentres, plus a creators’ fund worth some $350m a year. He called it the “ultimate dirty deal”. The government rejected the account as inaccurate. Days later the Australian Financial Review reported that Anthropic was seeking a deal along those lines. It is part of a plan to make Australia its second home outside the United States.
The row has exposed a split inside Labor. The industry minister, Tim Ayres, and the digital economy assistant minister, Andrew Charlton, are the keenest on courting AI money. Rowland and the arts minister, Tony Burke, want to protect creatives.
Albanese has tried to reassure both sides. He points to his record of making tech firms pay for local content, while calling the issues “complex”. His speech on Wednesday will be a vision statement, not firm policy, unlikely to settle much.
“We have negotiating leverage here”, he said, warning against an impulse buy the country might regret. Others in Labor counter that opposing datacentres is a form of nimbyism. Clear national rules, they argue, would secure a share of the global race.
The stakes reach past Canberra. Australia is wrestling with a question now open across Europe. There, text and data mining exemptions are already law, and creators are fighting over how far the opt-outs stretch. Newspapers are suing AI firms over training data, and artists are pressing disclosure claims in court.
Datacentre money is the new variable. Governments must now weigh that investment against the rights of the people whose work trains the models. Australia is about to show what a creative economy is worth once an industry offers billions to bypass it.
The public looks wary. Only 22% of Australians think AI brings more opportunity than risk.
