Australian authors and publishers demand AI licensing law at parliamentary hearing

What happened

On October 21, 2026, the Australian Society of Authors (ASA), the Australian Publishers Association, and novelists Charlotte Wood, Anna Funder and Markus Zusak appeared before the federal Joint Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence to oppose any weakening of Australian copyright law to accommodate AI model training.

What the authors demanded

• Mandatory disclosure by AI developers of the copyrighted works used to train their models.
• Prior permission from copyright owners before training, with ongoing compensation for works already ingested.
• Strengthened Australian copyright law compelling AI developers to license copyrighted work irrespective of where their models are trained.
• Clarification of importation provisions to expressly cover AI models, closing the offshore-training loophole.
• Introduction of statutory damages for infringement.
• Safeguards for Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property.

The appearance was in-person testimony, not a written submission. Lucy Hayward (ASA chief executive) told the committee: "We cannot be so indoctrinated by tech exceptionalism as to believe the largest companies on the planet cannot possibly obey our laws."

Scope note

This is regulatory advocacy, not a lawsuit. No company is named as a defendant; the demands target AI developers generally. The report situates the hearing in the global dispute over AI training on copyrighted works.