Anthropic proposes opt-out for AI training on Australian content amid media warnings

In submissions to a federal parliamentary inquiry, the ABC argued that AI companies should be subject to the same copyright, defamation, and privacy laws as media outlets. The broadcaster warned that the current unregulated status of AI services, which benefit from more favorable treatment than established media, will accelerate the "cannibalisation" of the Australian news industry. The ABC and SBS also suggested that AI companies be included in the news bargaining incentive, compelling them to negotiate commercial agreements with large media companies to support journalism.

SBS stated that large language models like ChatGPT and Claude pose significant challenges to the sustainability of the Australian news industry and risk eroding information integrity and public trust due to their use of news content without permission, attribution, or compensation. The joint select committee on AI is scheduled to hold hearings in Sydney, with executives from Anthropic and OpenAI expected to attend.

Anthropic, in its submission, acknowledged that broad exceptions for text and data mining have not gained widespread support and have been ruled out by the government. As an alternative, the company suggested a narrow form of conditional approval, including the implementation of "do not crawl" signals through robots.txt files. Anthropic also expressed openness to supporting Australian creators. However, SBS countered that robots.txt mechanisms are frequently bypassed and that the onus should be on AI companies to avoid wrongdoing, rather than on rights holders to constantly monitor and update protections.