Thursday 2 October 2025: In opening remarks to a Senate inquiry on Tuesday, Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) and Australian Writers’ Guild Authorship Collecting Society (AWGACS) CEO Claire Pullen joined other creative leaders and Senators in criticising the Productivity Commission for failing to model the economic contribution of creative industries. Australia’s creative workers raised questions over the Productivity Commission’s Interim Report, including whether the Commission is fit to publish…
Monday 15 September 2025: Australian creative workers have strongly opposed any suggestion that Australia’s copyright laws should be weakened, calling on the government to first address the fundamental issue of copyright theft and the misuse of creative work at the core of Artificial Intelligence (AI) development. The Productivity Commission’s interim report “Harnessing data and digital technology”…
The American Authors Guild has provided an update on the Bartz v. Anthropic lawsuit, advising that an agreement to settle has been reached. The class action lawsuit was filed by author plaintiffs against Anthropic, alleging the AI firm used copyrighted books downloaded from pirate websites to train its Large Language Model (LLM). It has been reported that Anthropic has agreed to…
Screen Producers Australia (SPA) has issued a Fact Sheet on writers and superannuation. SPA has argued that production companies are merely purchasing a writer’s intellectual property in a script, and that they are not engaging writers to “perform services” i.e. writing services. We do not consider this argument to be a sound one. The characterisation of writing contracts in this…
Thursday 7 August 2025: Australian creative workers and their royalty collecting societies expressed disappointment at the Productivity Commission’s advocacy for a text and data mining (TDM) exception, a move that would retroactively legalise the theft of Australia’s creative workers’ intellectual property, voices, images, and work, by foreign multi-nationals. The interim report “Harnessing data and digital technology” seeks feedback…
The Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG) and Australian Writers’ Guild Authorship Collecting Society (AWGACS) have rejected the suggestion that a Text and Data Mining (TDM) Exception for the training of AI models be considered by the government, and expressed disappointment at the Productivity Commission’s interim report. The report “Harnessing data and digital technology” seeks feedback on…
The theft of thousands of creative workers’ intellectual property by AI companies is unacceptable, say creatives of the Australian screen industry, urging the Government to come down hard on the ongoing and widespread use of stolen and uncompensated work by AI developers. Responding to the Productivity Commission’s consultation on policy reform, the Australian Writers’ Guild (AWG), Australian Writers’ Guild Authorship Collecting…
Writers who are engaged by production companies to write scripts are entitled to superannuation under the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992 (Cth) (the Act). Section 12(3) of the Act states that if a person works under a contract that is “wholly or principally for the labour of the person” then that person is an employee of the other…
The Australian Writers’ Guild welcomes the recommendation from the Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training’s Digital Transformation of Workplaces inquiry that would see developers required to prove that their AI systems have not been trained using creatives’ intellectual property. Recommendation 17 of the inquiry requires “developers to demonstrate that AI systems have been developed using lawfully…
The Australian Writers’ Guild has received reports of scams targeting screenwriters and book authors. These can be sophisticated scams that expressly refer to your published work by name, or include details about your work. Scammers may claim to be representatives of studios, streaming services, book publishers or literary agencies. This is a widespread problem and many of…
