On 15 July 2026, Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, announced a world-leading artificial intelligence (AI) framework, designed to ensure that Australia can capture the opportunity of AI, share the benefits, and keep Australians safe. The announcement included the immediate establishment of an Office of AI within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and a firm commitment to protecting Australian creative works from being used to train AI models without consent.

What was announced?

The Albanese Government will introduce a set of Australian Standards for AI (Standards), building on existing data centre expectations, with Australian values as the benchmark to ensure that AI works in Australia’s interests. The implementation of these standards will deliver what the Government says will be the first legislated national AI framework worldwide.

The Government’s approach will be considered by National Cabinet in August, with standards expected to be legislated early next year.

Office of AI

The Office of AI will be established to accelerate implementation of the Standards at a national level. The office will work closely with Ministry for Industry, Innovation and Science and Ministry for Science, Technology and the Digital Economy to unify policy across national, state and council levels. This is a significant development. Businesses looking to invest in, or deploy AI within, Australia can expect a single, nationally consistent set of rules rather than differing state-by-state requirements. 

Copyright protections

The Albanese Government committed to ensuring the strongest possible protection for Australian artists and media, holding the view that Australian writers, artists and journalists must retain ownership over their work, with no company using Australian creative works to train AI models without the artist’s control.

Following concern that technology companies have been using Australian creative content to train platforms, Albanese explained that not everything produced in Australia is “up for grabs” and that Australian “writers, musicians, artists and journalists must retain ownership and control of their work”. He expressed that Australian laws will “spell that out, plain as day”. He further explained that no “company should use Australian books, music, art or news to build or train AI without the artist’s control. That includes the artist’s control of the price and value of their work. Anything less is theft.”

In October 2025, the Albanese Government explicitly ruled out a text and data mining exemption to copyright laws that would allow technology companies to access content, free of charge, to train their AI models.

When legislation is enacted, this could require AI companies to negotiate and pay for access to Australian content and data before using it to train their models. This could have significant commercial consequences for AI companies, while setting a potential precedent for the broader Asia-Pacific region.

A practical question, however, is whether this protection comes too late for existing AI models. The most advanced frontier models (including those developed by OpenAI, Anthropic and Google) were trained on vast quantities of publicly available content (including Australian creative works) before any legislative framework was in place. Once copyrighted material has been ingested, its influence becomes embedded across billions of model parameters and cannot simply be extracted. The recent Anthropic settlement in the United States illustrates this: Anthropic agreed to pay USD 1.5 billion to resolve copyright claims by authors, but was not required to delete or modify its Claude models. This effectively treats the payment as a retroactive licensing fee rather than a remedy that undoes the original use. This creates what commentators have described as a "train now, pay later" model for AI companies. Australia's proposed framework will likely have real force for future training runs (as models are regularly retrained and updated), but for the current generation of frontier AI, the ingestion of Australian content will have largely already occurred. The legislation's value may therefore lie less in reversing past conduct and more in establishing the terms on which future models must operate, and in creating leverage for Australian creators to negotiate compensation for use that has already taken place. Lawmakers will need to consider whether a legislative change will further entrench the early movers who have already trained without constraint, potentially disadvantaging new AI companies and competition.

Data centre standards

The Standards will set out clear rules for large data centres, including a legal obligation to underwrite their own new power supply, pay their full share of connection costs so that energy bills are not impacted, reduce power when needed to strengthen the grid, and be as water efficient as possible. The Federal Government will also work with State and Territories to ensure that large data centres are built in the most appropriate locations, and with input from local communities.

AI safety

The Government will also outline whole-of-government AI consumer safety priorities in the coming weeks, building on the recent establishment of the AI Safety Institute.

What prompted this announcement?

Albanese’s announcement follows months of lobbying from technology companies and pushback from creative industries. The Productivity Commission faced backlash after its interim report suggested that technology companies should be granted an exception to copyright laws which in effect would give them free access to content to use for AI training.

Albanese’s speech followed reports that Australia’s copyright regime has been an inhibiting factor in a prospective USD 15 billion data centre investment being considered by Anthropic, where it is looking to Australia for 1.4GW of data centre capacity, which would effectively double Australia’s existing data centre supply.

Despite the Albanese Government ruling out a text and data mining exemption in October 2025, pressure from industry has continued. It was reported that an industry proposal was presented to Cabinet, where AI companies would be granted special exemptions to mine creative content in exchange for establishing an AUD 350 million per year fund for artists and committing over AUD 50 billion in data centre investment. Independent senator David Pocock called this proposal the “ultimate dirty deal”.

Albanese made his position clear in his speech by stating that Australia “can be much more than a data warehouse for AI products made overseas”.

Could this be a catalyst for change in New Zealand?

New Zealand’s Cabinet has asked Minister Brewer to report by 31 March 2027 on a possible copyright framework for generative AI in New Zealand. While Australia is legislating with urgency, New Zealand’s approach to date has been deliberately light-touch, with no AI-specific legislation and reliance on existing laws.

Australia’s announcement presents a question: is this still enough? New Zealand writers, musicians, journalists and artists face the same risks as their Australian counterparts. As Australia moves to legislate, it will be interesting to see whether it prompts a re-examination of New Zealand’s current legislative settings.

New Zealand is actively positioning itself as a destination for data centre investment with ambitious governmental targets for foreign investment in AI and data centre infrastructure. This creates a tension: mirroring Australia's approach could reassure creators but may deter the very investment New Zealand is seeking. Maintaining the current light-touch settings, risks New Zealand becoming a jurisdiction that still has some legislative protections against AI companies training without constraint, but the cost of enforcing rights against the behemoth AI companies effectively prevents any claim being brought.

For New Zealand businesses deploying or investing in AI, the practical implications are immediate. Australia's framework will likely shape expectations across the Tasman, and businesses operating in both markets may need to factor in Australian compliance obligations regardless of where they are headquartered. Our team, alongside our Australian colleagues at MinterEllison, is actively advising clients on the regulatory horizon across AI, copyright and data governance in both jurisdictions. If you would like to discuss what these developments mean for your operations, or how to position yourself ahead of potential licensing obligations, please reach out to one of our experts.

This article was co-authored by Zach Kirby, a Law Clerk in our Corporate and Commercial team.