AWG criticizes Productivity Commission report | Television tonight

The Australian Writers’ Guild and the Australian Writers’ Guild Authorship Collection Society yesterday issued a press statement following a Productivity Commission report on AI released on Friday before Christmas.

AWG and AWGACS CEO Claire Pullen said: “It’s been two years since we first reported that our members’ intellectual property had been stolen to ‘train’ AI datasets, and since then the theft has only increased. While it’s good to see the Productivity Commission tacitly admitting its copyright overreach and reversing its sweeping and ill-informed position in the draft report, we have to wonder why their final report, after a year of consultation, still has no concrete action to support productivity and growth Australia’s creative sector and why the report was dropped the Friday before Christmas in a busy news week.”

“It is staggering to suggest that protecting a company’s AI dataset – a collection of works they did not create and do not own under Australian copyright law – should take precedence over protecting a creator’s right to their own intellectual property,” Pullen said.

“If the Productivity Commission is serious about supporting the continued creation of new works as they claim, there are clear steps that can and should be taken as soon as possible, including standalone legislation or certain changes to the Copyright Act.

“The fundamental problem that the Productivity Commission has failed to address is that AI technology is built on the stolen property of Australian screenwriters, playwrights, authors, artists and musicians, all of which has been knowingly violated through bad faith.”

Australian creative workers have criticized the Productivity Commission’s lack of meaningful action to support the growth of Australia’s creative industries in its final report. Utilizing data and digital technologieswith the release date of Friday, December 19 attracting attention.

The report advocates a ‘cautious’ approach to AI-specific regulation, saying it should be introduced as a last resort and that the government should “monitor the development of AI and its interaction with copyright law over the next three years,” despite clear evidence that AI datasets have already infringed on creators’ copyrights and will continue to do so at the expense of creative workers.

After a notably poor performance by the Productivity Commission, which highlighted a lack of modeling to a Senate committee early this year, the report continues to espouse the unwarranted benefits of AI and advocate for big tech, even going so far as to suggest that requiring transparency of data sets would have “a chilling effect on innovation.”

The AWG and AWGACS are advocating for legislation including:

the protection of First Nations cultural assets;
a new economic right to use a work to ‘train’ an AI model;
voice, face and likeness protections for all Australians;
a moral right against using a work to ‘train’ AI.