Stop AI Theft

Stop AI Theft

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Australians are worried about the rise of AI – and they have every right to be.

A recent survey of MEAA members in the creative and media industries found that 71% are extremely concerned about the loss of human-led creativity.

Big Tech and AI developers—including Meta, Google, and OpenAI—have scraped millions of images, songs, articles, and films without consent, compensation, or knowledge. This isn’t innovation—it’s theft. These business models displace human work and undermine the integrity of our cultural and media landscape.

That’s why we are now demanding these big AI developers pay up!

Why it …

Australians are worried about the rise of AI – and they have every right to be.

A recent survey of MEAA members in the creative and media industries found that 71% are extremely concerned about the loss of human-led creativity.

Big Tech and AI developers—including Meta, Google, and OpenAI—have scraped millions of images, songs, articles, and films without consent, compensation, or knowledge. This isn’t innovation—it’s theft. These business models displace human work and undermine the integrity of our cultural and media landscape.

That’s why we are now demanding these big AI developers pay up!

Why it matters:

  • Accuracy and ethics at risk: AI-generated content can spread misinformation and erode public trust.
  • Human creativity undermined: artists, writers, performers, and media professionals are being replaced by machine-made imitations.
  • Jobs and integrity threatened: without strong protections, the creative and media workforce—and the democratic role it plays—will be hollowed out.

We need strong laws to protect Australia’s creative and media workforce. AI developers must be forced to pay for the theft and displacement of work.

That’s why MEAA is demanding these big AI developers pay up – with compensation passed on to creative and media workers.

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Open letter to AI companies

Read and sign the open letter below:

Dear CEOs and owners of Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Open AI and X,

I write on behalf of Australia’s actors, journalists, musicians, filmmakers, theatre and entertainment crew, and the communities they serve.

We reprimand your flagrant theft of our work to train your LLMs and for the vandalism that you are committing to the rich and storied culture, art and media that defines Australia today.

Your failure to respect our work shows that not only do you have a very poor appreciation for the role that the arts, creativity or public interest journalism play in our society, but that you are intent on sacrificing them on the altar of high profit.

This is why we are calling out the business practices of your companies as theft.

Millions of images, songs, articles, and films have been scraped without the knowledge, consent, or compensation of creative workers. Without this theft, your AI models would have been obsolete.

The theft of the stories, song, art and lore of Australia’s First Peoples risks the work of generations who have sustained their culture since the colonisation of Australia in 1788. Our voice artist members have had their voices stolen and replicated by AI. The work of our journalists has been used to train AI search, and many of you have admitted that you scrape the work of creative and media workers to train your AI without any consent or concern for lost income.

Creative and media workers bring enormous experience, skill and dedication to their work entertaining and informing our audiences. We are the enablers of cultural production and dissemination, in all communities and across the generations. Our work is the essential lifeblood of healthy democracies and functional societies. Our output is unique and original, and you are stealing it.

We are not going to sit idle while you devalue our work and degrade our society. Our work is not a free input to be fed into your machines.

We demand to be paid when our work is used by your company, and we demand compensation for the work you have stolen from us.

Until you and your representatives signal that you are ready to treat creative and media workers with respect and begin constructive engagement, you can expect to be continually called out and pursued for this theft.

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