Creators Force Copyright Retreat as Australia Weighs AI Access

Copyright became a political problem for artificial intelligence. British celebrities and creators opposed plans that would have let AI companies use protected creative work without permission, forcing the UK government to backtrack.

The campaign included Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Björn Ulvaeus, Julianne Moore, and Thom Yorke. Beeban Kidron, a UK parliament member and film director, organized opposition to the proposed reforms, turning a technical copyright dispute into a public fight over creative ownership.

Elton John called the UK government “absolute losers” over the proposal and said the changes would “rob young people of their legacy and their income.” The language was blunt, but the underlying complaint was simple: companies wanted access to creative work, while the people who made it faced the prospect of losing control over how that work trained AI models.

Public opinion backed the creators. Polling in the UK showed seven out of 10 adults supported paying royalties to copyright holders whose work was used to train AI models.

A campaign built around absence

Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and former AI executive, organized two deliberately empty projects to warn against watering down copyright law. His “silent” album, Is This What We Want?, contained recordings of dormant music studios and spaces, backed by more than 1,000 musicians.

That group included Damon Albarn, Kate Bush, and Annie Lennox. The album’s silence made the argument without supplying another polished soundtrack for the debate: remove permission and payment from creative work, and the industry may be left with empty rooms.

Newton-Rex also created an “empty” book titled Don’t Steal This Book. It listed 10,000 writers, including Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory, and Richard Osman.

“The only way the government gets something like this copyright proposal through is if no one notices what they are doing,” Newton-Rex said. “It will take just a moment for people to understand this is not fair.”

Kidron framed the dispute around the value people attach to creative work, saying: “People care about the songs, books and pictures that influence the critical moments in their lives.” That argument cuts through the policy language. Training data is not an abstract pile of material when it contains the work people remember, buy, perform, and build careers around.

Australia is considering the same fight

The UK retreat carries a warning for Australia, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is being advised to oppose similar AI copyright reforms. The Albanese government is considering giving AI companies unrestricted access to Australian content, a move that could allow companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI to train models on Australian internet content.

Anthropic and OpenAI urged Australia to relax its ban on training AI models with the country’s creative content. That request puts the commercial demand for more training material against the position held by creators and politicians who want copyright protections to remain in place.

Australia has a broad set of rules on AI and data centres due to take effect from next year, but the government has ruled out an exemption to copyright laws. The reforms under consideration could still open Australian internet content to AI training, depending on how the rules develop.

The UK experience gives Australian policymakers a clear political test. Seven out of 10 UK adults supported royalties for copyright holders, while the campaign led by Kidron and the public actions organized by Newton-Rex turned copyright into an issue voters could understand.

For AI companies, unrestricted access would expand the material available for model training. For writers, musicians, actors, and filmmakers, the question is whether their work becomes training fuel without permission or royalties. The UK government learned that people notice when the answer looks like “take first, negotiate never.”

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