Authors Guild rallies writers against Australia AI training bill

The Authors Guild is organizing an international petition against proposed Australian legislation that would let AI companies train models on copyrighted books without a license, so long as the training happens on Australian soil. The statement is open for signature by authors worldwide and frames the fight as one that affects creators regardless of nationality.

"The Australian government must not legalize the theft of the world's creators' work on their soil," the Guild writes. "Our work must only be used to train AI models in Australia with our explicit permission." The proposal under debate reportedly includes an opt-out mechanism for rightsholders, which the Guild rejects outright. Opt-outs, in its words, are "no substitute for copyright's opt-in licensing that allows creators to control who gets to use their work for what purposes," and in practice tend to steamroll everyone except the most sophisticated rightsholders.

The strategic worry the Guild spells out is cross-border. If training is legal in Australia but deployment remains lawful in the United States, AI companies could, as the Guild puts it, "simply move their training operations to Australia while continuing to deploy the models in the U.S." That workaround, the Guild argues, would hollow out the copyright suits American authors have already filed. Two writers we track in our Who's Who directory were circulating the Guild's call in the first days after it went live.

Publishers Weekly reports the Guild is leading an international coalition of creative-industry organizations behind the statement.