Labor MP Ed Husic Opposes Copyright Changes to Aid AI Firms

Labor MP Ed Husic said any moves to water down copyright law to benefit AI companies would go against the ethos of the party and undermine the principle of a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. He urged colleagues to place stricter rules on big tech firms or face failure.

The Media Entertainment & Arts Alliance called on the government to enact tougher new copyright rules to prevent creative works being taken to train AI models.

Husic said big firms like OpenAI and Anthropic should not be left to self-regulate and that the federal government should set strong rules. “If we were to wait for social licence with industry, we wouldn’t get emissions reduction. Governments sometimes have to step in,” Husic told Sky News on Tuesday.

“We’ve tried this. ” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will deliver a speech in Sydney on Wednesday addressing concerns around social licence and policy guardrails for AI, datacentres and Australian intellectual property. Labor has ruled out giving a text and data mining exemption for AI firms to train large language models on Australian content without compensation to creators, though cabinet discussions on copyright reforms continue.

Treasury officials warned Jim Chalmers that Anthropic would complain copyright rules were impeding the development of datacentres in Australia ahead of a meeting with the company’s chief executive Dario Amodei. Husic opposed making any such copyright changes. “These companies – Anthropic, OpenAI – these are going to be the biggest or are already the biggest firms on the planet.

Their executives get paid for their work, and if they’re expecting others to hand over their work without being paid, that is just a no-go zone and should be resisted,” he said. Labor minister Sam Rae and backbencher Alice Jordan-Baird released a statement last week raising concerns about a massive new development at Plumpton in Melbourne’s outer west.