The Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd) is the professional association for Australian and New Zealand editors. It exists to advance the profession of editing and to support and promote Australian and New Zealand editors.
As an integral part of the publishing industry and literary sector, we share the deep concerns of writers and publishers about the current and future uses of generative AI, and its potential to undermine the viability and integrity of the creative industries.
We offer the following in response to the two questions framed in the Productivity Commission’s interim report on harnessing data and digital technology.
Should the Australian Copyright Act be changed to introduce a “text and data mining” (TDM) exception that would allow the use of other people’s content for AI training and data analysis, without payment?
We strongly oppose the introduction of text and data mining (TDM) exceptions. We believe that TDM exceptions would deny Australian creators the right to be paid for AI-related activity that occurs in Australia and be an impediment to the development of ethical AI in this country.
As professional editors, our expertise is intrinsic to the process of identifying, developing and improving the quality of published works. The result of the combined labour of authors, editors and publishers are works that constitute what technology companies refer to as “high-quality data sets”, which they require to improve the function and market value of their technology products, yet propose to use without payment, despite paying for other inputs in their supply chain.
The Productivity Commission’s interim report states that a TDM exception “would not be a ‘blank cheque’ for all copyrighted materials to be used as inputs into all AI models” but gives no advice or assurance about secure mechanisms that could be implemented to ensure that the work of Australian creators is protected from unfair or unauthorised use.
The fact that AI models have already used pirated and illegal content in their training and may continue to do so in overseas territories is not a persuasive reason to set aside regulation and protection for intellectual property in Australia. We note, too, that the outcome of the class action against Anthropic in the US has resulted in a ruling that works used to train AI must be lawfully obtained.
Additionally, we support the Copyright Agency’s call for a scheme to compensate Australian creators whose works have been used for training AI overseas.
Should there be other changes to the Copyright Act?
We oppose any changes to the Copyright Act that weaken the rights and protection of Australian creators, including expansion of the existing “fair dealing” regime to include AI training as suggested in the Productivity Commission’s interim report.
The current fair dealing provision takes into consideration the effect on the market; generative AI is already causing loss of earnings and job opportunities to creative professions including authors, copywriters, illustrators, designers, translators, musicians and voice actors whose works are being used without permission, acknowledgement or remuneration to train the technology that now competes with them and threatens the Australian creative economy.
Fair dealing also limits the portion of text that can be used; this would be difficult to enforce with wholesale ingestion into AI.
The Australian Copyright Act already provides a framework that can facilitate permission and payment for use of copyrighted content, particularly on the small scale that it is likely to be used for Australian AI development.