Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie has called for new regulation to ensure songwriters and artists are protected against the threat posed by artificial intelligence, after a Productivity Commission interim report suggested that Australian copyright laws were a “barrier to building and training AI models”.
The interim report, which suggested that current regulations “does not adequately facilitate the use of copyrighted works”, has been lashed by creative stakeholders, including Creative Australia, who found that “clear principles” were needed to ensure that creative work used to train AI systems were “appropriately acknowledged”.
Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Speaking on Nine’s Today, McKenzie said adding further guardrails would help to limit the threat produced by artificial intelligence on creative industries.
“I have concerns about artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity, and rather than adopting it, holus bolus and rolling it out en masse across our country, we do need to understand the risks,” McKenzie said.
“Particularly to our songwriters, our creative artists, to make sure that they’re not bearing the cost. We need to protect our artists, and that means putting some regulation in place.”