The Australian Council of Trade Unions claims that it has reached a “breakthrough” agreement with the tech sector on a model for payment for using creative content in training AI has triggered alarm among bodies representing creative professionals.
Speaking on the sidelines of the economic reform roundtable, the secretary of the ACTU, Sally McManus, said “there was discussion with the Tech Council and ACTU about wanting to address the issue of paying creatives, journalists and academics for their data (and) their creative work that they do”.
“That’s quite a significant shift, and it’s one we really welcome.”
McManus said tech companies were already “rushing ahead” in their exploitation of content to train large language models.
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“They’ll be crawling all your data. And people whose livelihoods depend on their creative output deserve not to have that stolen from them,” she said.
“And so we’re committed to doing everything we can to address that. It was, I think, a big thing for the Tech Council to step up and say, ‘This is something we’re prepared to work on with you’.”
But the CEO of the Tech Council, Damian Kassagbi, played down the significance of the roundtable discussions.
“We are hopeful we can find a path forward on copyright that allows AI training to take place in Australia while also including appropriate protections for creators that make a living from their work,” Kassagbi said in a statement.
“What that path looks like has not been determined or agreed.”
Industry groups representing the creative professions are opposed to granting a “fair use” exemption to text and data mining under copyright law.
On Friday morning, Kassagbi argued in an interview on ABC Radio National that artists and creatives have benefited from technology, like Spotify, which he said had paid out billions of dollars in music royalties.
Asked whether tech companies would provide compensation for material used to train AI, Kassagbi said “At this stage, it’s too early to answer that question”.
“We believe we can work with the creative industry as we develop AI tools. What’s also important is the AI internet represents Australian content and culture,” he said.
McManus, on Friday, called it a starting step and agreed it was too early to specify how a potential compensation scheme would work.
The CEO of the Australian Recording Industry Association, Annabelle Heard, said any talk of an “agreement” was misplaced as tech companies should simply comply with existing copyright law.
Heard rejected any suggestion that AI firms should be given an exception to fair use rules to allow them to mine original Australian content to train their large language models – a prospect raised in a recent Productivity Commission report.
“Without knowing the details of what they have discussed, it’s unclear this is going to end up in a better situation for copyright owners. Certainly, we are interested in how you can come to an agreement without copyright holders at the table,” she said.
In a joint statement, the Australian Society of Authors and the Copyright Agency said “responsible AI development must operate within the boundaries of copyright law”.
“Innovation should be supported through licensed access – not through the unauthorised access of copyright content for the training of large language models.”
A News Corp Australia spokesperson said the copyright act was “a strong framework that requires no change”.
• This article was amended on 22 August 2025 to clarify the position of industry groups representing creatives.
