Compromise revealed as senior personnel from OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, meets Albanese ministers

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The Albanese government is considering giving AI companies access to Australian creatives’ works by default as it pursues a compromise with US tech giants.

“It would mean putting AI companies’ interests over everyday Australians, giving AI companies access to all Australians’ content, unless they opt out,” Pocock said on Tuesday.

“The burden should not fall on Australians to defend the rights they already hold over content they create and own and invest in.”

The proposals were contained in a document Pocock described as screenshots of government’s consultation proposals, tabled in the Senate on Tuesday and titled “AI on Australian Terms”.

The document raises as a key issue the vast number of small individual creators of online content, for which voluntary deals with AI companies “is not realistic/possible”.

It suggests requiring rights holders “digitally protect” their material if they do not want AI models trained on it – a proposal rights holders say is not feasible.

Under one option it proposes, AI companies would gain the right to access and train models on any unprotected online material as long as they made deals with enough businesses.

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Under another, AI companies would do deals with creatives’ rights holder organisations that give the access rights even if the content were made by someone who was not a member of the organisation that won the deal. A licence to access one category of material, such as music or text, would be extended to cover the many different small creators within that industry.

“The opportunity for Australia economically is enormous in collaborating with frontier companies … and having frontier training occur in Australia,” he told the ABC’s 7.30 program on Tuesday evening.

“We want to see this opportunity come to the country [but] it needs to come on terms which are in our national interests.”

Marles confirmed that the federal government had spoken with tech companies in San Francisco in the past fortnight on the issue, adding: “I think this can be done.”

The attorney general, Michelle Rowland, is running the government’s consultation with affected organisations.

OpenAI’s vice-president for global policy, Ann O’Leary, met ministers and officials this week as the company considers investing in Australia.

The newspaper reported the comments as an “ultimatum” that sought to “strong-arm” the government. Marles said the newspaper was “overstating” the comments. OpenAI has asked the paper to correct its headline and article.

Andrew Charlton, the assistant technology minister, told News24 on Tuesday he hadn’t seen any ultimatum and he would reject one if it were issued.

“We want to support Australian artists,” Charlton said. “We want to give them control over their work. We want to make sure they’re compensated, if they choose to have it used.

“We’re not compromising them or trading them off. So if we lose some datacentres over this, so be it.”