ARIA and PPCA welcome release of Australian Senate Report on Artificial Intelligence

The Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) and the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) have today welcomed the release of the Australian Senate’s report on Artificial Intelligence (AI), highlighting the urgent need for regulatory and policy measures to safeguard the rights of creators and businesses in the music industry.

ARIA and PPCA Chief Executive Annabelle Herd notes “this Report provides further recognition of the critical importance of getting the right regulatory settings in place urgently to ensure AI doesn’t decimate the creative industries, including recorded music.

“It’s vital that regulation guarantees transparency and upholds existing copyright protection to ensure Australian artists, labels, and rightsholders are not exploited as we realise AI’s transformative impact across the economy and society.”

ARIA and PPCA support the following recommendations in particular:

• Recommendation 8: That the Australian Government continue to consult with creative workers, rightsholders and their representative organisations through the Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Reference Group (CAIRG)  on appropriate solutions to the unprecedented theft of their work by multinational tech companies operating within Australia.

• Recommendation 9: That the Australian Government require the developers of AI products to be transparent about the use of copyrighted works in their training datasets, and that the use of such works is appropriately licenced and paid for.

• Recommendation 10: That the Australian Government urgently undertake further consultation with the creative industry to consider an appropriate mechanism to ensure fair remuneration is paid to creators for commercial AI-generated outputs based on copyrighted material used to train AI systems.

ARIA and PPCA acknowledge the Government’s existing work on AI Guardrails as well as the establishment of the Copyright and Artificial Intelligence Reference Group (CAIRG) and Steering Committee (of which ARIA and PPCA is a member) to look at AI copyright issues.

The full Senate report on Artificial Intelligence may be viewed here