Scott Farquhar thinks Australia should let AI train for free on creative content. He overlooks one key point

Farquhar, the Tech Council of Australia CEO, told ABC's 7.30 program on Tuesday: "all AI usage of mining or searching or going across data is probably illegal under Australian law and I think that hurts a lot of investment of these companies in Australia". Farquhar's claim overlooks that this is not a settled issue in the US, and could have devastating effects on creative industries. Farquhar's argument is that it is not theft of people's work unless the AI is used to "copy an artist directly" such as creating a song in their style. "I do think people would say that, hey, if people are going to sit down with a digital companion, an AI song creator and they collaboratively work with an AI to create something new to the world, that's probably fair use." Farquhar said the benefits of large language models outweigh the issues raised by AI training its data on other people's work for free.