Anthropic denies ABC claim it is in talks to licence content for AI training
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The news: Anthropic has denied ABC boss Hugh Marks’ claim they were in commercial negotiations to pay for the national broadcaster’s content to train its AI models
The context: Speaking on a panel on Tuesday evening, Marks told attendees of the Andrew Olle Media Lecture 2026 that Anthropic was particularly interested in access to radio and audio content.
According to reports, Marks also noted that “I think it’s the way that information is presented”, with the AI lab also interested in access to news content as well as video.
An Anthropic spokesperson said: “We were surprised by these comments as we are not in commercial negotiations with ABC for licensing their content.”
The comments land as artists and other copyright holders put pressure on the government to ensure there is no weakening of intellectual property protections to enable AI labs access to content for training new models.
In a speech setting out the government’s broad attitudes towards AI, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that “Australian writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work. Our laws will spell that out, plain as day”.
While the government has previously ruled out a text and data mining exemption for AI labs to access content for free, whether the system warrants other changes is still being considered.
On Monday, a US District Court judge in San Francisco approved a USD1.5 billion ($2.14 billion) settlement between Anthropic and authors that alleged the AI lab had misused their books to train AI models in breach of copyright law.
The sources: Anthropic spokesperson, The Australian Financial Review, Reuters
