Copyright Agency has begun collective licensing for AI activities in Australia.
AI activities include development of AI models (such as large language models), enhancement of models (e.g. by ‘fine-tuning’), deployment of AI models in AI tools and services (like chatbots), and use of content to enhance the operation and outputs of AI tools and services (e.g. grounding, Retrieval Augmented Generation).
In May 2025, we extended our Annual Business Licence – for businesses in sectors such as health sciences, finance, law and marketing – to allow staff to use licensed news media content in prompts for workplace AI tools.
In mid-2026, we will offer a further extension to allow the use of other licensed content (authorised by members) in prompts for AI tools (such as journal articles).
The licence extensions follow market research on the uptake of workplace AI tools in Australian businesses.
AI activities that are allowed by the statutory licence schemes that Copyright Agency manages for the education and government sectors are under discussion with those sectors.
Copyright Management Organisations in other countries are also developing collective licensing solutions. These include the CLA Generative AI Solution in the UK and Copyright Clearance Center’s Annual Copyright Licence (with AI rights) and AI Systems Training License in the US.
These solutions complement direct licensing arrangements offered by large publishers.
Copyright Agency is now consulting with members on licensing their content for contextual datasets that improve outputs from AI tools or systems (e.g. via retrieval augmented generation or grounding), and developing AI models.
May 2026
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