Creative sector urges Government to draw a line on AI and copyright
Saturday, 27 June 2026
The creative sector is urging the Government to explicitly rule out any AI exemption in New Zealand’s Copyright Act, arguing that existing copyright protections apply and warning that, without enforcement, creators have little real protection.
The Government is currently reforming the Copyright Act, a years-in-the-making process that will see the term of copyright extend from 50 to 70 years, as part of our free trade agreement obligations.
The change has to be in place by May 2028, and means that copyright for music recordings will extend from 50 to 70 years after publication, while other types of works will be protected for 70 years after the creator’s death.
A suite of other updates will also be ushered in to make sure the law is fit for purpose in the digital age - but a Cabinet paper released this month warns there are still unaddressed issues around generative AI and the protection of Māori cultural intellectual property. Te Puni Kōkiri is investigating the latter.
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While Australia and the United Kingdom have rejected use of copyrighted works to train AI, other countries have made exceptions.
Aotearoa has yet to put a flag in the sand on the issue, which has again been thrust into the spotlight after an investigation this month by The Atlantic revealed the names of millions of songs that were used without permission to train AI models.
Discovering her songs were used without permission to train a system called Sleeping AI “destroyed” New Zealand artist Vera Ellen, she said in an interview by email.
“The idea that anything could be extracted … made me feel ill,” Ellen told The Post. “I feel angry. We need collective action and legal protection in New Zealand and Australia. We need to consider how detrimental this is and could become for Māori and indigenous music, stories, knowledge, language and culture. We cannot be idle.”
Use of copyrighted work required consent, credit and compensation, Ellen said. “AI companies are seeking copyright exemptions, and we must be absolutely staunch on this matter.”
The Government was aware of concerns around copyright and generative AI and was monitoring developments, said Commerce and Consumer Affairs Minister Cameron Brewer in a statement.
Cabinet has asked Brewer to report back by March 31, 2027, on a possible copyright framework for generative AI in Aotearoa.
Another issue was whether AI-generated content should be protected by copyright and if so, who should own it.
Brewer said: “I will have more to say on generative AI and copyright in due course.”
Copyright Licensing NZ is warning that any law change almost doesn’t make sense unless there are commensurate enforcement measures, said its chief executive Sam Irvine in a phone interview.
While collective licensing agreements might emerge out of the dozens of copyright lawsuits against AI companies that are mostly under way in the United States, Irvine said the agency wanted to see New Zealand’s Government state that copyright does apply for AI.
Like the United Kingdom, Aotearoa needed a small claims court headed by a judge who’s an expert in copyright, trademarks and intellectual property so individual creators had guardrails for their work, Irvine said.
Amid all this, an amendment bill making its way through Parliament seeks to provide fair use of copyrighted material if the purpose is for parody or satire.
While the Greens’ Kahurangi Carter said that bill would help protect New Zealand’s comedians “from legal threats and outsized egos”, Irvine said there needed to be more definition around comedy and satire.
It’s expected those changes will be rolled in with other copyright reforms.
The issue was now likely to become whether collective licensing agreements for AI training would be seen as adequate or not for creators, said Dr Joshua Yuvaraj, the co-director of the NZ Centre for Intellectual Property and a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland’s law school.
AI companies were able to influence public discourse and policy reform, and lobbied Australia for copyright-friendly laws last year, Yuvaraj said.
“New Zealand has the opportunity to carve out its own bespoke approach, which makes sense given our commitment to upholding tikanga Māori and te ao Māori, particularly in the arts,” he said.
“Imagine a society where our cognition atrophies - we will lose the ability to make great advances in science, profound contributions to the arts, and responses to the pressing problems of the day. Researchers term the phrase cognitive surrender or cognitive offloading,” Yuvaraj said.
Given widespread concerns about the power Big Tech companies wield, New Zealand could not afford to have its copyright response to AI be shrouded in behind-closed-doors lobbying, Yuvaraj said.
“Public consultation and open policymaking on this issue matter. … If AI is embedded into society we risk large-scale cognitive surrender. The end result would be the cognitive equivalent of the humans in WALL-E.”