Copyright Agency member consultations on AI licensing
March 30, 2026
Copyright Agency is beginning consultations with members on licensing their content for artificial intelligence (AI) activities such as grounding or retrieval augmented generation (RAG), fine-tuning, and training of language models.
These activities can be done within enterprises for their staff (such as those in healthcare, finance or law), as well as by AI developers that are developing products and services.
This follows earlier consultations on an extension of Copyright Agency’s annual business licence (ABL) to allow staff of businesses to include third party content in prompts for AI tools used in the workplace. The ABL was extended in May 2025 to allow the inclusion of news media content in prompts, and will be further extended, in the coming months, to allow other content in prompts. The licence extensions follow market research on the uptake of workplace AI tools in Australian businesses.
Earlier this month, UK-based Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) announced the launch of the first stage of an industry-led collective licensing initiative, the CLA Generative AI Solution. Publishers are invited to opt in to a collective licence scheme, which has been developed along with Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA) and Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). There are links to further information here.
Collective licensing solutions have also been developed in other countries, including the US-based Copyright Clearance Center’s Annual Copyright Licence (with AI rights) and AI Systems Training License.
Copyright Agency is working with its international partners to develop collective licensing solutions that complement direct licensing arrangements by some of the larger publishers, and provide licensing opportunities in a quickly developing market.
If you would like further information, please contact our Member Services team.