Latest / The Front / Jack River vs Big AI ‘bullsh*t’: a singer’s crusade

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Jack River vs Big AI ‘bullsh*t’: a singer’s crusade · The Front

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: I'm Claire Harvey. Polly Ranken is an artist better known
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: as the singer Jack River. She's also a high flying
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: political lobbyist, using her considerable smarts and her cred as
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: an ARIA nominated musician to fight AI giants like Anthropic
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: and Open Ai with every bit of righteous fury she
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: can muster. The fight goes deep within rifts dividing senior
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: ministers in the Albanese government. It's basically art versus data centers.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Big AI promises to build data centers here, but only
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: if the government reshapes copyright law to allow them to
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: scoop up everything Australians create, from journalism to jingles, paintings.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: To po to holly. It's all pretty simple. The will is.
• 1:04
  Speaker 3: There, So let's do some deals. All the music you
• 1:19
  Speaker 3: hear on Home and Away, on Neighbors, there's a whole
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: process that's happened to get that song. Let's say it's
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: my song Home and Away, or reach out to my publisher,
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  Speaker 3: negotiate a license, get my permission and enter into a
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: contract in terms that we agree on.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: That's someone's job.
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  Speaker 3: It's a standard it's the law, and we live by
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  Speaker 3: the law.
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  Speaker 2: Channel seven. Licensing a song for home and away is
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  Speaker 2: one thing.
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  Speaker 1: But what happens when the client is Anthropic or Google
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  Speaker 1: and they're not interested in one song? They want all
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  Speaker 1: the songs, all the books, all the art, and they
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  Speaker 1: don't want to pay a licensing fee. In fact, they
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  Speaker 1: want a specific exemption from copyright law for what's called
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: text and data mining TDM.
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  Speaker 3: For sure, Right now we are entering a space where
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: the very rights that underpin creation of value, that asset
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  Speaker 3: of a song are being questioned by technology companies. And
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  Speaker 3: even worse, the major models of today Chat, GPT, Claude
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: and major kind of software companies like Suno have actually
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: trained their models on completely stolen, scraped content for free.
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  Speaker 1: AI models need power, huge amounts of processing power humming
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  Speaker 1: away in data centers. They need land, roads, infrastructure, and
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  Speaker 1: all that equals investment That sounds attractive to politicians and
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: THEI companies. Pitch is if the politicians let them bypass
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: these pesky copyright laws, they'll open the checkbooks to build
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: multimillion dollar hubs right here in Australia. If you dig
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: into that even a little, though, there are big questions.
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  Speaker 1: Data centers, once they're built, only require a handful of staff.
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  Speaker 2: They also can be a huge drain on the energy grid.
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  Speaker 1: That's why creative organizations like NewsCorp, publisher of The Australian,
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  Speaker 1: say the data center investment dream isn't worth giving up
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: our copyright protections. Holly, you and I met in Parliament
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  Speaker 1: House in Canberra when we were both there for conversations
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  Speaker 1: about the changes that the Federal government might be making
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  Speaker 1: to how artificial intelligence is policed. But in your other
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: life you are musician Jack River. How do these two
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: hollies match up?
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  Speaker 3: They just have to live together. Yeah. Throughout my music career,
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: I've been in bold like I've led multiple campaigns on
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: behalf of the music industry. One of them, in particular
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: that was most successful was this major campaign called Our Soundtrack,
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  Speaker 3: Our Stories, which is a national call out to play
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: more Australian music on TV radio in advertising, and that
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  Speaker 3: was a really major viral campaign that kind of changed
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: the ecosystem in Australia. So I have done some things
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: throughout my music career on behalf of our industry. But
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: I really love having my hands on the tools and
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: I really love actually looking at the change that is
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: required and working on it right up close. And so
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: I got into politics, probably more from that campaign storytelling
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  Speaker 3: point of view, more so working with and representing folks
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: that were closer to the policy, and then realized that
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: maybe we could do the policy better than those people.
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: And essentially, yeah, I started an advisory arm of Sentiment,
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  Speaker 3: the communications company that is a it's a government relations
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: firm and a registered loving firm now and we work
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  Speaker 3: those two things hand in hand, so attempting to change
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  Speaker 3: policy and the narrative alongside it. So it's pretty wild,
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: it is.
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  Speaker 1: And I've seen you in rooms full of self appointed
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  Speaker 1: or real industry experts, and you're the smartest person in
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  Speaker 1: the room.
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  Speaker 2: Clearly you are.
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  Speaker 1: You are incredibly effective, You're on first name terms with
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  Speaker 1: politicians and business leaders. How have you kept your creative
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: spark alive through all of that? Because that kind of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: work is a bit of a grind.
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  Speaker 3: Producing a song is similar to producing a narrative or
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: producing a policy. There are bits and pieces and parts
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: and a problem to figure out. So I find policy politics,
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: how it integrates with communities and everyday people like the
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: most fascinating and important thing in the world. It gives
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: me endless energy to engage in politics and understand the
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  Speaker 3: most critical problems that need to be solved.
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  Speaker 1: Australian copyright law presently protects creators of all sorts of
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  Speaker 1: things books, journalism, music, art by requiring someone who wants
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: to use those works to have a license, to pay
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: copyright fee, and to come to some sort of agreement
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: with the creator about what it would be used for.
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  Speaker 1: The AI companies want to have an exemption from that law,
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  Speaker 1: which would mean that they can use any work for
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  Speaker 1: what they call text and data mining to train their
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  Speaker 1: models for free without having to pay. One of their
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  Speaker 1: arguments would be the horse has already bolted, We've already
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  Speaker 1: trained our models.
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  Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
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  Speaker 3: It's bullshit. If we were looking at a house of
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  Speaker 3: stolen bricks and saying, oh, it's all good, don't worry
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  Speaker 3: about it. The house is built now. Or you walk
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  Speaker 3: into a library and gather up all the thousands of
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  Speaker 3: books and sell them in the shop next, or like,
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  Speaker 3: we wouldn't tolerate this behavior. If these were material, physical objects,
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  Speaker 3: it's not hard to prosecute. I think it's pretty simple,
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  Speaker 3: but have for people to get their heads around. So
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  Speaker 3: what's going on is that rights holders, so organizations who
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  Speaker 3: own the rights of these works, individuals all around the
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  Speaker 3: world are suing the shit out of these companies, especially
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  Speaker 3: in the US.
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  Speaker 4: The Recording Industry Association of America filing copyright infringement last
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: year today against two separate companies, accusing them of training
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  Speaker 4: their AI models on copyrighted music without permission and then
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  Speaker 4: spitting out AI generated music.
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  Speaker 3: There are over two hundred cases live right now, and
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  Speaker 3: there have been quite a lack of the case making
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  Speaker 3: it completely through because the technology companies are opting to
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  Speaker 3: settle before the case is decided. So anthropic. One point
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  Speaker 3: five billion dollar settlement with a group of authors and
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  Speaker 3: publishers in the US are Suno, a company that has
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: copied enormous amounts of music, has been sued in the
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  Speaker 3: US by multiple recording companies, you know, settling out of
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: court and then making their way into the deal room.
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  Speaker 2: To do a license.
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  Speaker 3: As long as we have copyright law, the law that
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: protects the copy and use of human created works, we
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: will get through this and find our way through this mess.
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  Speaker 3: It's absolutely not too complicated to get out of. You
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  Speaker 3: can switch off a model today. The really lazy and
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  Speaker 3: tragic part of this is that these technology companies are
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: having to get taken to the deepest parts of a
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: court case to decide to then license the content that
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: they've stolen. Labels, publishers, news companies, media companies have their
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: doors wide open to do licenses. They've been through this before,
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: they've seen it all before, they've licensed music in complex environments.
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  Speaker 2: The will is there, so let's.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: Do some deals.
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  Speaker 4: If they think Napster's bad, I can tell you there's
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  Speaker 4: a lot worse coming.
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  Speaker 5: The latest move in the legal chess game between the
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: recording industry and napt is.
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  Speaker 1: The music industry has plenty of scars from past battles
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  Speaker 1: with tech companies. In nineteen ninety nine, Napster, an online
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  Speaker 1: platform that made it possible to share troves of music
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  Speaker 1: between users, contributed to physical album sales drying up completely.
• 9:06
  Speaker 6: You fix that problem and new technologies over here to
• 9:09
  Speaker 6: take over. That's why there has to be an overall
• 9:12
  Speaker 6: philosophical and legal understanding about well, then, how does an
• 9:16
  Speaker 6: artist get paid for what they do?
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  Speaker 1: The fractions of a cent that streamers like Spotify pay
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  Speaker 1: artists are well documented, and remember two thousand and five's
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: Guitar Hero.
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  Speaker 2: There's a Guitar Hero player inside every one of us.
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  Speaker 1: The creators of that game needed to compensate artists to
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: include their works for users to jam along to music.
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  Speaker 1: Legend Prints famously refused a deal, maybe because the offer
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: was too low, probably because Joystick guitars not very rock
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  Speaker 1: and roll.
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  Speaker 5: I just think it's more important that kids learn how
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  Speaker 5: to actually play the guitar.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: To play music is one of the greatest things.
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  Speaker 5: To create something from nothing is one of the greatest
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  Speaker 5: feelings with I don't know, I wish it upon everybody.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: It's heaven. We're Guitar Hero relied on well known songs
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  Speaker 1: to succeed. Suno, an AI tech company which actually generates
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  Speaker 1: songs from scratch, represents a shift away from celebrating human
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: hits to replacing them. He's co founder Mikey Shulman, talking
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: to twenty VC host Harry stebbings, it's.
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: Not really enjoyable to make music now. It takes a
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  Speaker 5: lot of time, it takes a lot of practice. You
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: need to get really good at an instrument or really
• 10:31
  Speaker 5: good at a piece of production software. I think the
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  Speaker 5: majority of people don't enjoy the majority of the time
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  Speaker 5: they spend making music.
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  Speaker 2: How do you respond to that.
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  Speaker 3: Any person listening to that knows it's bullshit because they've
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: been through a divorce, they've had a baby, they've got
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: a cousin that's been in a car crash, or they've
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: had their heartbroken. They know that art is built and
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: created to help us get through hard stuff. And if
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: the artist hasn't been through any hard stuff, usually hear
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: it and you can tell. And so I just believe
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: that whatever happens, whatever way we get through this, humanity
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: will prevail. The proof is also in the data, like
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: the polling around AI and how the public, the real
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  Speaker 3: people in this actually feel about it, Like they know
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: it's not exactly right, it's not feeling good.
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  Speaker 1: It's already hard to make a living as an artist.
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  Speaker 1: What's the risk if Australia gets the laws wrong on
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: AI for the ability of artists to make a living
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  Speaker 1: or the ability of our kids to become artists.
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: What we're talking about with copyright law, we're talking about
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  Speaker 3: removing the right to work in the first place, the
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: right to even have value around your work in the
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: first place. If the government we can copyright law and
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: say you can train on Australian content for free and
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: without permission, then there's absolutely no hope for people to
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: aspire to create value from any work in the future,
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  Speaker 3: and that includes journalism and me like it's writing, it's
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: anything that we create. So I think that it's a
• 12:05
  Speaker 3: Canarian the coal mine kind of situation of eroding human rights,
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: like a humans rights in the law to pave way
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: for endless plundering and profit of the human experience. It
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: can't happen, It won't happen. Copyright law is incredibly important
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: to safeguard the future of human expression, culture, creativity and
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: ensure that humans have a voice in their own future.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Coming up.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: Elbow is a music fan, but will he put his
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: money where his Joy Division T shirt is. Australians can
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: be quite easily dazzled, I think by powerful, wealthy Americans
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: talking a big game about technology. Earlier this year, Dario
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Ammi Day the Sea of Anthropic came to Canberra and
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: had some meetings with some senior ministers, making his argument
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: that if Australia wants to be part of the AI
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: revolution and have big data centers built here, we might
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: want to get on board. With making the path a
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: bit smoother for AI companies in terms.
• 13:20
  Speaker 7: With this technology, like, you know, I do think rights
• 13:23
  Speaker 7: holders have legitimate claims here, and you know, we're kind
• 13:26
  Speaker 7: of more here to talk about. You know, how can
• 13:28
  Speaker 7: we arrive at an arrangement that works for everyone if
• 13:31
  Speaker 7: we're able to generate vast ephenomenal growth with AI, you know,
• 13:35
  Speaker 7: it's a standard you know, economic growth thing upon making
• 13:38
  Speaker 7: the pie bigger and then there's more that we can
• 13:41
  Speaker 7: get to everyone.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: Where are we at right now in terms of the
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: way the government is thinking about this and where it
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: might go in the next little while.
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: Thanks to the news, creative and media industries last year
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: last October, the Alberanzi government took a well first position
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: and rejected a text in data mining Exception of Copyright Act.
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: So that was a huge step in the right direction
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: of affirming protection of copyright Australian content and culture. But
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: of course the technology companies, the largest companies in the
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: world were trillions of dollars, have been very unhappy about
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: that because they want this content for free. So they've
• 14:20
  Speaker 3: been raining down a really immense, immense lobbying effort on camera,
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: an effort in the Australian media to essentially beg the
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: government to weaken copyright law in their favor. If I
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: look at government and think what's going to happen, I
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: kind of see two camps. There's a small camp in
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: the government that I think are It can be swayed
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: by some of the sparkle and narrative coming out of
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: Silicon Valley, but thankfully I think there's a really strong
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: core in the Federal government that understand the situation in
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: great detail and the thinking, you know, a couple decades
• 14:59
  Speaker 3: ag head and actually not buying what Anthropic and Open
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: Ai is selling and seeing it for what it is.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Anthony Albanese's a famous music fan. He still wears his
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: band T shirts. Do you have a sense of which
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: side he falls on with his different camps of ministers.
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: I think Anthony Albanizi is inherently on the side of
• 15:21
  Speaker 3: Australians and workers and a deep prosperous Australian future. He's
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: the Prime Minister. He needs to engage in exciting international
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: deals and hold the space for genuinely important deals to
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: occur with folks like Microsoft and Anthropic. But I do
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: believe he's not someone to be easily wooed and swayed,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: and that's a great value to have in a prime minister.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: I think I'd be really worried if our prime minister
• 15:52
  Speaker 3: is off with the fairies in Silicon Valley.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you for fighting for art and for journalism music.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: I'm really glad you're on our side.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Claire, I'm glad you're on this
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: side too, Thank you so much.
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Thanks for coming.
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: The music you've heard throughout this episode was written and
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: performed by Jack River. This episode of the Front was
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: hosted by me Claire Harvey and co produced by Jasper Leak,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: who also wrote our theme.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us on the Front this week.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: Our team also includes Kristin Amiot, Leah Tamaglue, Tiffany Dimmack,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: and Joshua Burton.