APRA AMCOS has released a statement from CEO Dean Ormston in response to “comments” made by Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar at the Australian Financial Review‘s AI Summit, held in Sydney on 2 June.

APRA AMCOS CEO Dean Ormston. Photo courtesy of APRA AMCOS

Farquhar discussed how current Australian copyright laws are inhibiting the training of AI models and urged for this to be “[sorted] as soon as possible” so that data centres aren’t incentivised to establish somewhere outside Australia.

“If I train [an AI model] in Australia, I need to cut a deal with every single recording artist in the entire world, because of the way our copyright laws work – so without some government change … it is impossible,” Farquhar said, as reported by the Australian Financial Review. “If you come to Australia and you want to do something that involves US content or Chinese content or Korean content, you are subject to Australian copyright laws.”

Farquhar, who stepped down as joint CEO of Atlassian in 2024, is currently Chair of the Tech Council of Australia.

Ormston has lambasted Farquhar’s argument as “simply not true”.

“The issue isn’t the law. It’s that...