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Australian Writers’ Guild takes aim at OpenAI over AI training opt-outs

The launch of OpenAI's updated video model Sora 2 has fuelled mounting concerns over copyright violations amid an escalating battle over the prospect of Australian copyright reform.

John Buckley
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The Australian Writers’ Guild is among a growing group of creative industry groups to criticise OpenAI’s approach to training its models, following the high-profile release of its Sora 2 video model, which launched on an invite-only basis last week. Sipa USA.

The Australian Writers’ Guild has joined some of the world’s most powerful entertainment organisations hitting back at OpenAI for requiring copyright holders opt out to stop their material being used to train the company’s latest model.

The Guild, which counts screenwriters among its membership and is among Australia’s most influential creative groups, is set to expand its push for compensation from tech giants to include OpenAI, after writing to executives at Amazon and Google directly last year.

Australian Writers’ Guild CEO Claire Pullen said putting the onus on rights holders to opt out of having copyrighted works used as inputs to train large language models, such as those that power ChatGPT and its new text-to-video tool Sora 2, amounts to mass theft.

“‘Opting out’ is the ultimate concession that Big Tech was hoping to get away with the mass theft of creative work,” Pullen told Capital Brief.