Australia’s consideration of copyright law rewrites that would allow AI training has made the country a central battleground for the creative industries, with OpenAI, Anthropic and others lobbying the federal government for changes enabling tech companies to train AI models there. ARIA CEO Annabelle Herd warned in October that “done the way that Big AI is proposing,” it “would devastate the music industry and make Australia a pariah for rights holders globally.” In July, prime minister Anthony Albanese had given assurances that tech and AI companies couldn’t use copyright-protected works without consent, credit and compensation. On Oct. 13, Jo Briskey and Jono Duniam, co-chairs of the joint parliamentary committee for AI, suggested Australia’s existing copyright law wasn’t up to scratch and that without fresh changes creators would miss out in the AI age; Herd called the statement “wrong” and said it “ignores substantial evidence provided to the Committee,” adding that Australian copyright law “is the only thing standing between major American AI companies and unchecked access to the world’s content right here from Australia.” The International Confederation of Music Publishers (ICMP), representing 90% of the world’s commercially released music, agrees. “This is a vast landgrab,” said ICMP director general John Phelan, who said AI companies “must play by the same Australian and international laws as all other AI companies who respect the rules and so our industry licenses.” Earlier in