{"slug": "australia-draws-line-on-ai-theft-while-washington-sells-out-creators", "title": "Australia Draws Line on AI Theft While Washington Sells Out Creators", "summary": "Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the creation of an Office of AI and pledged strong protections for creators against AI theft, explicitly ruling out copyright exemptions for AI training. Meanwhile, U.S. lawmakers have not acted as AI companies lobby for exemptions to use American creative work without compensation. Albanese also introduced strict regulations on energy-intensive datacenters.", "body_md": "Australia's prime minister just told Big Tech that Australian creators' work is \"not up for grabs\" — while Washington sits silent as AI companies scrape American intellectual property to train their models without paying a dime.\n\nAnthony Albanese announced Wednesday the establishment of an Office of AI and promised \"the strongest possible protection\" for Australian writers, musicians, artists, and journalists against what he flatly called \"theft\" by artificial intelligence firms. In Washington, both parties have refused to act as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Microsoft lobby for copyright exemptions that would let them vacuum up Americans' creative work without compensation — and use it to build AI models that routinely scrub conservative voices.\n\nAlbanese didn't mince words. \"Let me make this crystal clear: not everything produced in Australia is up for grabs,\" he said. \"No company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist's control. That includes the artist's control of the price and value of their work. Anything less is theft.\"\n\nThe Labor government has explicitly ruled out a text and data mining exemption — the very carve-out Big Tech has been pushing for in both Australia and the United States. According to the Guardian, there has been active lobbying from big tech and an industry proposal for special copyright exemptions, but Albanese drew a hard line. Cabinet discussions on copyright reforms are continuing, with \"a diversity of views among senior ministers,\" but the prime minister's speech was the strongest assurance yet that creators would be protected.\n\nAnnabelle Herd, CEO of the Australian Recording Industry Association, welcomed the guarantees and said her group wants to sign licensing deals with AI companies to ensure artists get paid. \"We don't know exactly what most of these AI companies want, they haven't made a public case about what the problem is, but there isn't one,\" she told Guardian Australia. Her message to AI firms: \"They should pick up the phone and start licensing.\"\n\nAnthropic's general counsel Jeff Bleich struck a conciliatory tone, saying the company \"respect[s] the process articulated by the prime minister today\" and takes \"seriously Anthropic's responsibility to meet the terms set out by the Australian government for AI developers.\" But earlier this year, ahead of meetings with senior ministers, Anthropic cited Australia's policy uncertainty as a \"major impediment to new investments\" — the classic corporate pressure play: give us what we want or we take our money elsewhere.\n\nMicrosoft Australia's president Jane Livesey offered the standard industry line that users will embrace AI if \"people trust that AI is safe and well-governed\" — corporate-speak for letting the industry regulate itself.\n\nAlbanese also announced strict new rules for energy-intensive datacentres: restrictions on where they can be built, requirements that they not compete with housing, and safeguards against raising electricity prices for consumers. He compared the rise of AI to social media, saying governments should have placed tougher rules on tech companies when online harms first became known — a rare admission from a government that it waited too long.\n\nAustralia is drawing a line: your work is your property, and no AI company gets to steal it. In Washington, where Big Tech's lobbying dollars flow to both parties, American creators are still waiting for a single prominent politician to fight for them. The question isn't whether these companies will pay — it's whether anyone in Washington will make them.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-draws-line-on-ai-theft-while-washington-sells-out-creators", "canonical_source": "https://dissenter.com/media/australia-draws-line-on-ai-theft-while-washington-sells-out-creators", "published_at": "2026-07-15 12:19:17+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-15 12:21:02.903917+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-policy", "ai-ethics", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Anthony Albanese", "OpenAI", "Anthropic", "Microsoft", "Australian Recording Industry Association", "Annabelle Herd", "Jeff Bleich", "Jane Livesey"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-draws-line-on-ai-theft-while-washington-sells-out-creators", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-draws-line-on-ai-theft-while-washington-sells-out-creators.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-draws-line-on-ai-theft-while-washington-sells-out-creators.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/australia-draws-line-on-ai-theft-while-washington-sells-out-creators.jsonld"}}