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The great AI art heist · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's Thursday August seven, twenty twenty five. Electric vehicles produced
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: by brands like Tesla, Byd and Kia aren't going the distance.
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  Speaker 2: Literally.
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  Speaker 1: Testing shows their range between charging stations is well below
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: what they're advertising. That story is live now at the
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: Australian dot Com dot au. Big tech companies want to
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  Speaker 1: rewrite Australian copyright law so they can hoover up literature, film,
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  Speaker 1: music and journalism to train their AI models. Now, the
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Productivity Commission is considering the idea that artists are furious
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: today the.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: War over who owns our culture.
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  Speaker 1: He's one of Australian biggest stars, the kid Laroi, an
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  Speaker 1: Indigenous rapper and singer from Inner Sydney. His mates with
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  Speaker 1: the likes of Justin Bieber and the Aria goes.
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  Speaker 3: To all Right, your iHeartRadio Music Award winner the Billboard
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  Speaker 3: Heart One hunter has a new leader, the kid Larie.
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  Speaker 4: Fur thousand miles the kid Larie, But the.
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  Speaker 1: Kid Laroy's biggest fan is chat gpt I decided to
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  Speaker 1: do an experiment analyze the kid Laroi's lyrics for me.
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  Speaker 3: The kid Laroi's lyrics explore themes that resonate deeply with
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  Speaker 3: his audience, particularly focusing on love, heartbreak, fame and personal growth.
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  Speaker 3: Here's an analysis of these major themes, love and heartbreak.
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  Speaker 2: You get the picture.
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  Speaker 1: When I ask chat gpt to show me its sources,
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  Speaker 1: it references a bunch of websites with many articles written
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  Speaker 1: by Ai. Okay, let's ask it to do something really
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  Speaker 1: unique to Australia.
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  Speaker 2: Can you write.
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  Speaker 1: A song in the style of the kid Laroi about
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  Speaker 1: Murray River red gums.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely, here's a song inspired by the kid Laroi's style,
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  Speaker 3: focusing on the majestic Murray River red gums, with that
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  Speaker 3: mix of raw emotion, vivid imagery and youthful reflection. Down
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  Speaker 3: by the river where the red gums grow, roots run deep,
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  Speaker 3: but the water's running low. Leaves whisper stories that the
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  Speaker 3: old winds know, trying to find a place where my
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  Speaker 3: heart can go.
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  Speaker 2: It goes on like that for another eight stanzas, and.
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  Speaker 3: Then want me to help make it sound more like
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  Speaker 3: a full song with melody ideas or production tips.
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  Speaker 1: Now the bot is off and away. It writes the
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  Speaker 1: chord progression and the melody C.
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  Speaker 3: Major A flat E flat B flat.
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  Speaker 2: Then orchestrates the whole thing.
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  Speaker 3: Use a trap influenced beat, but keep it mellow, seventy
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  Speaker 3: to ninety beats per minut. It works well. Use soft
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  Speaker 3: atmospheric piano or synthats, and it doesn't want to stop.
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  Speaker 3: Want me to record a rough humming track for you.
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  Speaker 1: Now, all that's happened without the kid ler Roy seeing
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  Speaker 1: a sent ur, even being.
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  Speaker 2: Aware that it's happened. I could record this album.
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  Speaker 1: And release it without leaving my desk. Has AI just
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  Speaker 1: helped me steal someone's work? Or is all this fair enough? Artists,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: musicians and writers are up in arms about a new
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: report from the Productivity Commission. It suggested the enthusiastic embrace
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: of generative AI tools could inject billions into our economy,
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  Speaker 1: and it's considering relaxing copyright rules to help get there.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: I hashed it out with The Australian's media editor James Madden.
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  Speaker 5: The devil is in the detail with this report. Now,
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  Speaker 5: it's an interim report and these are just ideas being
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  Speaker 5: put forward by the product Commission, But at its heart,
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  Speaker 5: the idea being put out there is that big tech
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  Speaker 5: AI companies should have the right to access, potentially the
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  Speaker 5: copyright of a raft of creative professions, including journalism, music, art,
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  Speaker 5: poetry books.
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  Speaker 1: The Productivity Commission's report says AIS are already being trained
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  Speaker 1: on Australian music, literature and film. The options for dealing
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  Speaker 1: with it are licensing. So an AI creator wants to
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  Speaker 1: feed the kid Laroy's entire catalog of songs or every
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  Speaker 1: book about Murray River red Gums into an AI and
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  Speaker 1: ask it to learn from them. That have to register
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  Speaker 1: what they were doing and then pay a license fee
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  Speaker 1: to the artists and the authors, or enforcement that is
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  Speaker 1: court action, takedown notices or mediation. But the Productivity Commission
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  Speaker 1: says there are gaps in the existing copyright regime, so
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  Speaker 1: it's not even keeping up at the moment. That leaves
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  Speaker 1: us back with licensing as a possible future option. So
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  Speaker 1: artists could be paid for allowing AI to learn from
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  Speaker 1: their work. But here's the twist. The big tech companies
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  Speaker 1: don't want to pay at all. They want something called
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  Speaker 1: a fair dealing exception for text and data mining.
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  Speaker 2: Fair dealing is one.
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  Speaker 1: Of those phrases you hear a lot when people are
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  Speaker 1: talking about copyright under the Commonwealth Copyright Act, there's a
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  Speaker 1: fair dealing exception for news, critique, research and parity. So
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  Speaker 1: let's take the Kidler Roy again. If someone's doing a
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  Speaker 1: news story about his new tour, or reviewing his new album,
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  Speaker 1: or studying his lyrics for a UNI presentation, or doing
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  Speaker 1: a stand up comedy routine about him, it's considered fair
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  Speaker 1: to use some of his work without breaching his copyright
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  Speaker 1: as long as you properly attribute it to him and
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  Speaker 1: only use a small amount. That means it wouldn't be
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  Speaker 1: okay to take his music and turn it into an
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  Speaker 1: ad for a new hatchback. That's a commercial purpose, which
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  Speaker 1: means you'd have to negotiate with him for the rights
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  Speaker 1: and likely pay millions of dollars. So the question with
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  Speaker 1: AI is is it more like an album review or more.
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  Speaker 2: Like a hatchback ad?
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  Speaker 1: That is, is AI fairly consuming information in order to
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  Speaker 1: analyze it, or is AI repackaging it and robbing the
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  Speaker 1: creator of their work. It's something that the tech titans
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  Speaker 1: are very keen on. Scott farquhas spoke to the National
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  Speaker 1: Press Club the other day that one of the co
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  Speaker 1: founders of at Lassian and this is his big ask
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  Speaker 1: wasn't it.
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  Speaker 4: Australia's copyright wars are out of sync with the rest
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  Speaker 4: of the world. We're in a perverse situation where copyright
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  Speaker 4: holders don't see a single dollar of extra money as
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  Speaker 4: a result of our wars. But we also don't we
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  Speaker 4: miss out on the economic upside of hosting and training
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  Speaker 4: models in Australia.
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  Speaker 5: This is the fuel that powers their machines. And I
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  Speaker 5: suppose what they want is the top grade fuel, and
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  Speaker 5: they want it all and this is their business model,
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  Speaker 5: and I don't want to pay for it. It's as
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  Speaker 5: simple as that, and you would have seen the outcry
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  Speaker 5: from a raft of industry leaders making the point that
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  Speaker 5: in what other industry is it okay to steal others'
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  Speaker 5: content and monetize it for your own good.
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  Speaker 2: Yes.
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  Speaker 1: So, on one side we have big tech companies that
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  Speaker 1: are training AI models right now, models like Chat, GBT
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  Speaker 1: and Gemini. On the other side, we have organizations like
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  Speaker 1: News Corp Australia, which owns the Australian media companies, Creative
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  Speaker 1: Australia and the government agencies that represent artists and all
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  Speaker 1: sorts of arts companies. What basically do those arts and
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  Speaker 1: media companies want.
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  Speaker 5: They want the right for the content creators to retain
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  Speaker 5: the copyright to their own work.
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  Speaker 1: They basically want the copyright law as it exists not
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  Speaker 1: to change. They're happy with the status quo.
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  Speaker 5: That's correct. And of course one of the concerns too,
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  Speaker 5: I think from Creative Australia and OPRA and others has
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  Speaker 5: been the concern that is this a push by AI
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  Speaker 5: to wreck respectively justify the use of other people's content
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  Speaker 5: for their own profit. The Industry Minister Timy has came
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  Speaker 5: out in response to the Productivity Commission report and said
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  Speaker 5: the Australian Government has no plans to change the copyright law,
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  Speaker 5: and the Coalitions spokesman Julian Lisa said a similar thing too.
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  Speaker 5: What you do have to remember though, is these AI
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  Speaker 5: companies are powerful lobbyists and have the means and the
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  Speaker 5: wealth to exert an enormous amount of pressure on the
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  Speaker 5: Australian government and governments around the world for that matter.
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  Speaker 5: But at this stage, certainly perhaps in response to the
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  Speaker 5: reaction from various professions and the industry leaders, the government
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  Speaker 5: has indicated that there will be no change to the
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  Speaker 5: copyright law for now.
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  Speaker 1: News Corps, publisher of the Australians very strong views that
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  Speaker 1: they should not get that exemption.
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  Speaker 2: Why would that exemption make a difference.
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  Speaker 5: It would basically give the AI companies a foot in
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  Speaker 5: the door. The exemption that's been talked about here is
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  Speaker 5: a fair dealing exemption for something called text and data mining,
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  Speaker 5: which would give AI companies the right to use content
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  Speaker 5: for research and study purposes, which again is probably a
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  Speaker 5: euphemism for theft if we're to be honest. And what
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  Speaker 5: that would do is allow them to detect patterns and
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  Speaker 5: trends in content and that, so the argument goes, is
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  Speaker 5: the slippery slope to Hollis bolus consumption of other people's content.
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  Speaker 1: I took James through my kid LaRoy t GPT experiment.
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  Speaker 5: It's a really good example, actually, notwithstanding the fact that
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  Speaker 5: I doubt the kid LaRoy will ever sing about red
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  Speaker 5: gum from the Murray. However, one of the points that
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  Speaker 5: arose from the PC report was that once you give
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  Speaker 5: a little ground on copyright law, you're actually giving a
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  Speaker 5: lot in this regard because it is virtually impossible to
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  Speaker 5: detect theft of copyright under AI because of the various
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  Speaker 5: layers that material goes through. For example, the kid Lroy
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  Speaker 5: could never actually pursue that case, presumably because it's just
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  Speaker 5: so hard to detect where this theft has come from
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  Speaker 5: how would stand up in the court of law. So
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  Speaker 5: that has been one of the arguments about the so
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  Speaker 5: called exemption that's been floated by the PC, in that
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  Speaker 5: tweaks to copyright law would potentially just effectively be a
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  Speaker 5: trojan horse into a much greater problem, whereby once the
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  Speaker 5: ground is given, you can never get it back.
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  Speaker 2: Coming up. Can this bell be unwrung?
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  Speaker 1: Has the horse already bolted here? Clearly gbt he knows
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  Speaker 1: a lot about the kid la Roy already.
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  Speaker 2: Is it too late to be making any changes?
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  Speaker 5: No, I don't think it's too late. I think a
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  Speaker 5: strain copyright law is sound as it currently sits, and
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  Speaker 5: it is considered gold standard the world over because it
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  Speaker 5: does afford significant protections for creatives. I don't think it's
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  Speaker 5: too late. But just as the argument was put forward
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  Speaker 5: in the PC's report that perhaps copyright law hasn't kept
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  Speaker 5: pace with the rise of AI technology, I think the
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  Speaker 5: flip side is also true, in that creative professions need
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  Speaker 5: to try and keep a step ahead of the rise
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  Speaker 5: of AI and fiercely defend the copyright law for what
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  Speaker 5: it does for them. At present, the PC's doing its
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  Speaker 5: job effectively and I think they cited a number in
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  Speaker 5: that report saying potentially loosening copyright laws could open up
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  Speaker 5: one hundred and sixteen billion dollars of investment in the
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  Speaker 5: Australian economy. When you super all back, do we want
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  Speaker 5: to live in a world where the creative professions are
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  Speaker 5: marginalized to the point where there is no incentive to
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  Speaker 5: pursue that craft. I don't.
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