Executives from world’s leading AI companies to clash with Australia’s creatives at parliamentary inquiry

Executives from the world’s leading artificial intelligence firms will clash with Australia’s creative institutions at a parliamentary inquiry in Sydney on Tuesday.

Industry giants Anthropic, OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are expected to argue AI will deliver an economic and productivity boom while also calling for a “pro-innovation” copyright policy that would put Australia in “a competitive position globally”.

The hearing will give Australian politicians a chance to grill Open AI’s chief strategy officer Jason Kwon, one of its most senior executives, after the tech company’s rogue AI agent breached Services Australia portal.

Jetting the US-based executive into Sydney came after the ChatGPT developer had apologised to Australia after the June 18 breach which took until September to tell the government about.

In its submission Sam Altman’s tech company raised more coordinated notifications for significant Al incidents, lobbying for shared definitions, “severity levels” and reporting thresholds to allow countries to “respond together.”

Open AI also acknowledged the increasing threat AI would pose to cybersecurity and said it supported “democratic governments having access to advanced Al and the expertise to use it to protect citizens, strengthen critical infrastructure and respond to emerging threats”.

It noted “cyber threats and biological misuse” as emerging issues and said Australia could strengthen its “domestic expertise” and “cooperation with trusted international partners”.

Both Open AI and Anthropic reminded parliamentarians Australia was already a leading adopter of AI technology.

While Anthropic said Australia was the No.1 user of its Claude assistant, Open AI said Aussies sent nearly 60 million messages to ChatGPT daily.

“Australians are using Claude at 6.4 times the rate our economic modelling predicts would be expected for its population,” the Anthropic submission stated.

Both companies said Australia needed a balanced approach to copyright laws, with Anthropic suggesting that AI developers should have a seat at the table when deciding its copyright rules.

“Anthropic accepts that broad exceptions from copyright, such as a text and data mining exception, have not received widespread support and have been ruled out by the Government,” it stated.

“As an alternative, we believe that the Government could permit Al model training through a narrow form of conditional approval.”

It suggested the Government could grant targeted approval for AI training on copyrighted material, provided they meet specific conditions including investment in Australian creators and clear “do not crawl” signals.

Representatives from the creative industry are also expected to be in Tuesday’s session , including Screen Producers Australia, Screen Rights, MEAA, Australian Recording Industry association, Australian Association of Voice Actors and Australian Writers Guild.

The ABC will be first to front the committee and have argued in their submission for stronger copyright protections, data transparency, and accountability mechanisms.

Their submission highlights the growing trend of younger Australians using AI chatbots to consume news, which it argues drives traffic away from the ABC’s platforms.

The broadcaster’s concerns are echoed in similar submissions from the Guardian and SBS, who insist the AI overview feature on search engines is “cannibalising” audience reach.

“A number of technology companies already publish Al-based real-time summaries of news and excerpts... with almost no ability for the ABC to control how its content is being used,” it stated.

News organisations also called for Al to be subject to the same regulatory framework as Australian media — insisting that if it wanted to act like a publisher, it should apply the same media law and ethics, adhered to the code of practice, and have regulatory checks and oversight.