Australian Creatives Push Back Against ‘AI Theft’

Australian artists and cultural workers are demanding stronger laws, more transparency, and remuneration

Four people in a cozy bar hold up "WANTED FOR AI THEFT" posters with smiles and playful expressions. The atmosphere is lighthearted and humorous.

Artists are demanding tech companies to uphold transparency and fairness when rolling out AI to scrape and mine local content. X/ @withMEAA

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Apr 10, 2026, 00:30

This story written by Mong Palatino originally appeared on Global Voices on April 09, 2026.

Artists, journalists, and Aboriginal cultural workers in Australia have initiated the “Stop AI Theft” campaign to demand stronger protection for their creative output amid the rising use of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI).

The Tech Council of Australia reported in August 2025 that 84 percent of Australians in office jobs use AI at work. According to Tech Council research, AI in Australia could create up to AUD 115 billion (over USD 79 billion) in economic value annually and 200,000 jobs by 2030.

But the widespread adoption of AI has also raised concerns about its potential harm to society, including significant disruptions to the creative industry. In recent years, artists have argued that AI has been undermining their livelihoods and, in some cases, stealing their work altogether. Many of the most popular generative AI models illegally scraped content from the internet without creators’ permission, which the models then use to generate “new” content. In some cases, the models spit out nearly identical materials to the original copyrighted item.

A group of voice actors said their work was cloned without their knowledge. Local journalists said their reports were plagiarized and used on AI-generated news websites. A January 2026 report published by the University of Sydney warned that journalists are increasingly being rendered invisible in Generative AI search results. Meanwhile, Indigenous activists say people have used generative AI models to produce and sell fake Indigenous art.

Citing the need to counter the detrimental impact of AI, artists and media workers have banded together in launching the “Stop AI Theft” campaign. Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance chief executive Erin Madeley summed up the rationale of the campaign.

For the big Silicon Valley tech companies that own these machines, their business model is built on taking others’ work and selling it as their own and what we’ve seen so far is the thin end of the wedge. It is theft, plain and simple – theft of people’s voices, their faces, their music, their stories and art. If left unchecked, the increased use of AI tools in the media, arts, and creative industries will lead to mass job losses and the end of intellectual property as we know it. It will also drive the erosion of our news and information to the point where the community cannot tell fact from fiction.

Activists launched the campaign with the hashtag #PayUp, to emphasize how big tech companies are profiting off artists’ work while the artists themselves are continually losing business.

As authorities seek to boost AI-related investments, they initially considered revamping copyright laws to allow AI to mine and train local online content. This was opposed by local content creators and media institutions.

In July 2024, MEAA appeared at the Senate Select Committee hearing on Adopting Artificial Intelligence and raised the following demands to the government.

Give users the power to opt-out of having their work used for training AI. Legislate to force companies to compensate creative and media workers for the work that has been used to train AI. Enact rules around transparency forcing companies to publicly disclose what materials they’ve used to train AI.

Aside from lobbying for the enactment of policy measures, the “Stop AI Theft” campaign also encouraged local artists to sign an open letter addressed to Silicon Valley tech companies.

Dear CEOs and owners of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Open AI and X, We are the enablers of cultural production and dissemination, in all communities and across the generations. Our work is the essential lifeblood of healthy democracies and functional societies. Our output is unique and original, and you are stealing it. We are not going to sit idle while you devalue our work and degrade our society. Our work is not a free input to be fed into your machines. We demand to be paid when our work is used by your company, and we demand compensation for the work you have stolen from us.

“We already know that big tech has been profiting from stealing the work of Australia’s creative workers and journalists, and calls to legitimize this theft are incomprehensible,” said Joseph Mitchell, assistant secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions.

The “Stop AI Theft” campaign held a dialogue with tech companies in August 2025 about the demand for transparency and remuneration.

It celebrated the Federal government’s announcement in October 2025 to maintain copyright laws to protect local artists and creative workers.

This commitment was reflected in the National AI Plan unveiled by the government in December 2025.

Australia has strong protections in place to address many risks, but the technology is fast-moving and regulation must keep pace. That’s why the government continues to assess the suitability of existing laws in the context of AI. The government has provided certainty to Australian creators and media workers by ruling out a text and data mining exception in Australian copyright law.

The latest update in the “Stop AI Theft” campaign acknowledged the success in blocking the push of tech companies to change copyright laws that would have given them free access to Australian creative works to train AI.

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