FIVEAA Winter Afternoons with Angie McBride - 2 July 2026

But like I said, sun is trying to get through.

Now, I was talking earlier and talking to Matthew about this, and I think it's one of those issues that we really need to think seriously about, because as we've sort of seen, COVID affecting a lot of industries, and then it really, really affected artistry, music, creatives, comedy, live shows.

But this is another thing that could affect this industry as well.

So artists, authors... creators, they spoke at Parliament House yesterday about AI companies and licensing agreement.

So in a nutshell, I think, and our next guest will be able to explain it more, is AI is able to steal music from musicians, words from authors, content from movies and TV shows and even radio content.

Author of the story Treehouse Books, The Day My Bum Went Psycho and Children's Laureate, Andy Griffiths joins me now.

Hello, Andy.

Thank you so much for your time.

My pleasure.

Thanks for having me.

So what is the fear of AI with artists and creators? Is it basically that they can steal your content and freely use it?

Look, I think there's a number of issues.

One of them, and one of the most urgent at the moment, is that big tech is riding roughshod over traditional copyright laws and taking anyone's content, whether it's a song or a movie or a book and feeding it into their machines without permission and without payment.

And that is a complete 180 degrees on how artists make their work and how copywriters traditionally worked.

If you create something, it is yours to sell by negotiation with a publisher or a film company, and they approach you, you sit down at the table, and you talk about it and work out a fair price.

Big tech have just gone in scraping books.

I've had 67 titles scraped.

They were released on a list last year without my knowledge, without my permission.

So that's the number one issue that we are very concerned about.

And they are now pressuring governments to give them an exemption from those copyright laws.

Well, two questions there, Andy.

I know it's such a big topic.

So with our strict copyright laws in Australia, two questions, are they strict enough and how are the AI companies and the big tech companies able to steal this stuff and not get caught out by our copyright laws and legalities and all those kind of things?

Well, they are doing it overseas to begin with.

Our copyright laws are fit for purpose and the Australian government has reaffirmed their commitment to keeping those laws but we know there is enormous pressure on them to relax them for the companies perhaps in exchange to build more data centres.