Australian Writers' Guild writes to Meta over AI training terms; members say no opt-out is acceptable

What happened

On 10 November 2026 the Australian Writers' Guild (AWG) and the Authorship Collecting Society Australia Aotearoa (ACSAA) published a letter to Meta objecting to Meta's updated Commercial Terms, under which content from business or commercial posts may be collected and used to develop and train Meta's products, including its AI systems. The letter asks Meta for an assurance that its platforms will not scrape members' works and asks how Meta ensures its platforms do not infringe members' works.

The members' position

The guild says it surveyed its members earlier in November and the feedback was unanimous against the terms: members said the choice should not be to opt out, and that handing over their work should not be the price of staying on platforms where they promote their work and build their careers. The letter says there is no clear way to opt out of the updated terms, and that Meta's position is that users who do not agree should stop all access or use of its products for business or commercial purposes.

What the letter argues

The letter, signed by AWG and ACSAA group CEO Claire Pullen, says that on the face of it Meta scraping members' copyrighted content to train generative AI models would infringe members' moral and economic rights, and raises concerns about the objection process, about market power, and about seeking clarity from the competition regulator. It also raises the guild's concerns about the infringement of First Nations works and cultural sovereignty, and asks for Meta's feedback on how it respects First Nations works and people using its platforms.

Context

This is a letter from a creators' organisation, not a court filing, and no response from Meta is reported in the source. It follows Meta's pause of the new commercial terms in some markets and a Sao Paulo court order barring Meta from using Brazilian press content for AI training under the same terms; those developments are covered in separate items. AWG represents more than 3,000 performance writers in Australia; ACSAA has more than 2,800 members.