Anthropic is pushing to be able to legally train its LLM in Australia before its stock exchange listing
Creatives groups have pushed back against AI companies’ proposal to establish and invest in a fund for creatives in light of an ongoing impasse with the federal government over reforms to Australian copyright law.
To get a text and data mining exemption, AI companies would add to the creatives fund annually through a subscription-type payment model. They would also make significant data centre investments valued at tens of billions, according to the Australian Financial Review.
News Corp Australasia executive chairman Michael Miller and Copyright Agency chief executive Josephine Johnston spoke out against the fund. Per the AFR, Miller did not accept that the fund was a feasible fix while Johnston said the fund undermined the government’s assurances to the agency, which acts in the interest of Australian authors, publishers and visual artists.
“Dismantling copyright and replacing it with a fund removes the economic framework for how creators are rewarded for their intellectual endeavours and incentivised to create new work. It would put their rights at the whim of future governments’ priorities and the tech sector largesse”, Johnston said in a statement published by the AFR.
Miller said AI companies should initiate direct negotiations with the organisations possessing content they seek to use commercially.
“I am constantly assured by the government that they support commercial negotiations between copyright owners and the AI companies”, he said in a statement published by the AFR.
Attorney-general Michelle Rowland has maintained that the government would not budge on copyright legislation – even though assistant technology minister Andrew Charlton has been tasked with landing AI infrastructure investments. Prime minister Anthony Albanese has been active in efforts to craft AI policies addressing voter concerns.
AI giant Anthropic, developer of the Claude LLM, has filed a proposal with US regulators for an IPO set to be valued at $1.3tn. Chief executive Dario Amodei met with politicians, financiers and data centre developers in Australia in March and April as the company looks to set Claude’s second training base in the country.
Senator Sarah Hanson-Young is chairing a Senate inquiry into AI and data centres, and she expressed concern with reports that Anthropic was campaigning to weaken Australia’s copyright legislation.
“If they want to use copyrighted material to train their AI, they should pay for it like everyone else does. After strong pressure from rights holders, the Albanese Government has already ruled out a text and data mining exemption for AI. It would be a betrayal of Australia’s creative industries if they went back on that promise now,” Hanson-Young said in a statement published by the AFR.
She called for a moratorium on the construction of hyperscale data centres until certain regulatory settings like energy, water and environmental impact were established. According to AFR, Anthropic declined to comment on the copyright negotiations.
The Attorney-General’s Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Reference Group, which was launched in 2023, published a consultation paper last December 2025 to source submissions. The group indicated that a stakeholders’ meeting would be convened in coming weeks to address the submissions.
In May, News Corp, Nine, the ABC, the Australian Recording Industry Association and the Australian Writers Guild were among 18 media organisations to sign a joint statement rejecting the relaxation of the federal government’s stance on AI.
