Authors Guild organizes global statement opposing Australia's planned AI-training copyright exception

What happened

On October 22, 2026, the Authors Guild published a call for a global statement opposing planned Australian legislation that would change copyright law to allow AI companies to train on authors' works without a license. The Guild is collecting signatures on a statement condemning the plan as legalizing "theft of the work of the world's creators."

The Australian plan

Per the Guild, the Australian government intends to introduce legislation making it legal for AI companies to exploit authors' works without a license - applying to works from anywhere in the world, including the United States - so long as the exploitation happens on Australian soil. The regime would be opt-out rather than opt-in. The Guild argues opt-out systems "are difficult to implement and often steamroll over the rights of all but the most sophisticated copyright owners," and that companies would simply move training operations to Australia while continuing to deploy the models in the US - effectively preempting the lawsuits authors have brought against AI companies.

The statement

"The Australian government must not legalize the theft of the work of the world's creators on their soil. Our work must only be used to train AI models in Australia with our explicit permission." The statement will be published online with a list of signatories. The Guild says it is organizing the statement jointly with creative-industry organizations around the world.

Scope note

Advocacy item, not a lawsuit. No company is named as a defendant; frontier-model trainers are linked as reference to the policy ask, following the pattern of the October 21 ASA/APA parliamentary-inquiry item.