Labors plans to loosen copyright protections for artificial intelligence threaten the livelihoods of Australian artists and media workers, writesRosie Williams.

THE GOVERNMENT is caving in to artificial intelligence (AI) billionaires on removing copyright protections.

The first notion I had that the music industry is about to be hit by a tidal wave with the potential to destroy livelihoods was when I logged into my music distributor dashboard after a long absence and found a new option labeled Fair Trade AI:

When I first read this, I had no real idea what AI music was but it was obvious to me I needed to get up to speed. Within weeks, I would watch class action lawsuits against AI companies unfold in the United States while TreasurerJim Chalmerssalivated over investments promised by tech bros demanding he wind back copyright law to sanction thewholesale plunderof our music, art and media.

Within days, I would hear that U.S. President Donald Trumpfired the headof the Copyright Office of the United States one day after she handed down her report into copyright and AI.

This staggering level of authoritarianism does not augur well for Australians with skin in the game. At the Treasurer's behest, Australia's Productivity Commission has beentaskedto identify prospective areas for (law) reform and measure long term economic impacts and benefits to Australian households of such reforms.

The Productivity Commission just released itsinterim reportwith Chapter 1 labelled: Enable AI's productivity potential.

The most telling point in the summary states:

One of the problems of concepts like productivity is that they have no way to express, measure or value the human connections that are the point of art, music and great writing. This is why we have lost so much of social value in recent decades as we watch the death-throes of mainstream and independent media.

The irony is that artificial intelligence is believed to hold the key to increases in productivity but this productivity is directly extracted from the wholesale theft of every piece of cultural output that has and will continue to be mined by massive tech companies, unless regulators decide to step in.

Jim Chalmers and the Productivity Commission are making clear that instead of defending the rights and livelihood of Australia's creators, they intend to give a pass to AI companies to plunder our work to provide themselves with the only value their otherwise useless products actually have.

In recent months, music streaming services have allowed real musicians to be displaced by fake AI bands with fake bios and music that clones existing musicians.

In an unusual turn, bothGreens and Liberals leadershave spoken out against Labor's plan to rule in favour ofbig tech. The strange bedfellows, no doubt due to the fact that both big music labels and mainstream media are at a similar disadvantage to independent musicians and publishers in these AI wars.

In the context of large-scale music theft, my music distributor, Landr, is taking a relatively ethical approach in making participation in AI training an opt-in process (for its own AI services) and also requiring musicians releasing with them to confirm with each release whether or not AI has been used at any stage in the process of making the track.

Participants are promised20 per cent of the revenue generated from the program. As with music distribution in general, whether the promised royalties amount to anything more than a drop in the ocean is another matter. Realistically, my music, along with every other artist has probably already been stolen for use in AI software.

That my own government intends to be complicit in this theft is extremely disappointing.Industry leadershave spoken loudly and clearly against the direction being taken by Jim Chalmers and the Productivity Commission.

You can add your voice to the call for regulation through an AI Act at theMedia, Entertainment and Arts Alliancewebsite today. You can also make submissions to the final report of theProductivity Commissionuntil Monday 15 September. You can read more about attitudes and use of artificial intelligence in the music industry in APRA AMCO's report,AI and Music.

If you have content to protect, you can also follow the development ofpoison pilling, products which are set to disrupt AI software by making art and audio tracks resistant to AI scrapers.

Rosie Williamsis a citizen journalist who runs privacy workshops atrosiewilliams.com.au. You can follow Rosie@Info_Aus.

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