AI firms urge Australia to relax ban on training models
Artificial intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic have urged Australia to reconsider its ban on using the country's creative content for training AI models. They suggest a limited exemption could balance artists' rights with increased investment in the sector. The companies, which have partnerships with Australian data centre developers, are pushing for a framework that allows models to learn from publicly available information while offering collaboration opportunities to rights holders.
SYDNEY, Sept 22 (Reuters) — OpenAI and Anthropic have urged Australia to reconsider a ban on allowing them to use the country's creative content to train their models, saying a limited exemption could protect artists' rights while supporting more investment. The companies said countries around the world are still working out how to regulate artificial intelligence while trying to attract investment that economists say could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars by the end of the decade.
Australia has said it will roll out a broad set of rules on AI and data centres from next year, but has already ruled out an exemption to copyright laws that effectively stops the mostly US-domiciled companies from carrying out training there. In submissions to a parliamentary inquiry in September on laws governing AI, the companies acknowledged the ban but called for it to be relaxed. Anthropic, which owns AI chatbot Claude, said in its submission that broad copyright exceptions have not received widespread support and have been ruled out by the government.
It said that, as an alternative, the government could allow AI model training through a narrow form of conditional exemption. If Australia requires "investment or other conditions designed to support the future of Australian creators and cultural endeavours... we are open to considering those conditions," it added. ChatGPT maker OpenAI called for "a balanced copyright framework that allows models to learn from publicly available information" while offering rightsholders opportunities to collaborate.
The companies linked the issue to major infrastructure investments in Australia, with OpenAI having signed an offtake agreement with Australian data centre developer NextDC for a planned data centre in Sydney and Anthropic named last week as a partner for a data centre in Queensland. The submissions add to pressure on the government as it weighs the interests of AI developers against those of authors, publishers and other creators, who have resisted exemptions allowing their work to be used to train commercial models without consent or payment. The Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence is due to deliver its report in November. 01;