Mulling AI investment, Anthropic lobbied Australia on copyright law

Anthropic's chief executive Dario Amodei has lobbied Australian officials for "copyright reform" as the artificial intelligence giant seeks to make a major investment in the country, official briefing notes released Monday show.

Amodei met Australia's Treasurer Jim Chalmers in April to discuss plans to enter the Australian market, including building data centres.

According to briefing notes released under freedom of information law, Amodei had requested the meeting to discuss barriers to AI training in Australia, "particularly copyright reform".

Australia's centre-left Labor government is under pressure from musicians, screenwriters and artists to reject proposals they say seek to let AI models use copyrighted works for free.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to deliver a speech on AI and "social licence" on Wednesday.

A briefing note government officials had sent to Chalmers ahead of his meeting with Amodei said: "Anthropic will raise that investment in AI model development capability and associated infrastructure, like data centres, is contingent on clarity of copyright settings."

In the United States, Anthropic has argued AI training is covered as "fair use" of material, which does not require rightsholders' consent.

The Australian officials disputed this in the briefing note, saying the matter was "not settled".

In Australia, AI companies require permission from copyright holders through a voluntary licence.

Anthropic was told Australia would not introduce a text and data mining exception in its copyright law, and was in talks with a range of stakeholders over the issue.

Anthropic "purport there is a 'long tail' of smaller rights holders which impedes efforts to identify and purchase licensing rights", the officials wrote.

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Australian meeting.