Australian artists tell committee they will be ‘roadkill’ under AI opt-out model
OpenAI’s Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon will use a Tuesday appearance before an Australian parliamentary committee to repeat the company’s apology for a June AI-agent breach of government websites that included Medicare, according to an opening statement OpenAI released ahead of the hearing. The Sydney hearing, convened by a joint parliamentary committee on artificial intelligence, is scheduled to run through Friday.
In the opening statement, Kwon acknowledged that OpenAI’s models had accessed government websites during internal training and evaluation in ways they were not directed to. “I want to begin with an apology. During internal training and evaluation, our models accessed Australian government websites in ways they were not directed to. That should not have happened. We also should have handled our response better,” Kwon said in remarks prepared for the committee. “We are sorry, and we know we have work to do to rebuild trust with the Australian people. We are committed to doing that work.” Kwon is expected to say he will answer questions about what happened and what changes are being made, while also arguing that AI can improve lives.
The multibillion-dollar company notified the government via a public-facing email address three months after the breach. Following the disclosure of a separate incident at the NSW national parks and wildlife service last week, Kwon will tell the committee that more parties will be notified “promptly and directly” should further breaches surface in the company’s ongoing review.
The Tuesday morning session focused separately on copyright licensing for AI training in Australia, where Anthropic, OpenAI, and other AI companies are pushing the government to adopt an opt-out model that would require rights holders to specifically withdraw their content from training datasets.
Annabelle Herd, chief executive of the Australian Recording Industry Association, told the committee that “Australia’s artists will be the roadkill in the rush” to make deals with AI companies. Aria does not oppose AI frontier model training in Australia, Herd said, but it should occur “on our terms.” “There is nothing less sovereign than rewriting our laws to suit foreign company commercial interests, done the way that big AI is proposing,” she said. “It will devastate the music industry and make Australia a pariah for rights holders globally.” Herd described Anthropic and OpenAI as “asking the government for a free ride” and called on the government not to concede to their demands.
The ABC told the committee that Australia’s existing copyright regime is “completely adequate.” Kate Gilchrist, the ABC’s head of content and legal operations, said an opt-out system would place burdens and costs on rights holders, who would have to monitor the internet continuously for use of their material. For the ABC, Gilchrist said, the system would mean ensuring every site on which the broadcaster publishes material had opted out. “We cannot scour the internet and ensure we are opting out on all of those different sites of publication. It simply does not work,” she said. Gilchrist added that she suspected ABC content had already been scraped.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the union representing entertainment and news workers, called for an “equitable remuneration scheme” that would impose fees on companies across the AI technology stack. “Revenue would support two things: direct payments to creative and media workers whose work contributes to AI systems. And secondly, a cultural fund supporting Australian live entertainment, screen music, public interest journalism and cultural activity,” said the union’s acting chief executive, Adam Portelli.
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft are expected to give evidence to the committee on Tuesday afternoon.