The ABC is being asked by Anthropic to share decades of radio and television content in exchange for training the giant’s AI giant’s language models, the broadcaster’s boss has revealed.
Hugh Marks said the tech giant wants access to ABC archives to train its Claude AI chatbot, but media companies like the public broadcaster are in an unequal negotiating position during a panel session that focused on the impact of artificial intelligence on media companies and co-workers on Tuesday night.
“One of the interesting things for us in that discussion is that they want access to our audio content,” Marks said when asked by journalist and radio host Hamish Macdonald about the ABC’s ongoing talks about a commercial deal with Anthropic.
“They want access to the work that you and your colleagues are doing now and have done for generations. I think it’s how that information is presented, so the audio content is something they really want.”
It is rare for media executives to make such comments about ongoing trade negotiations. Nine CEO Matt Stanton declined to comment on the finer details of the latest plan The company inked with Microsoft to use content from its titles, including this masthead.
Seeking access to ABC’s news content is “a given”, Marks said, as tech giants such as Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI want the validity of the information delivered to those using their chatbots.
“Increasingly, as the world moves to video, they also want video content,” Marks added.
Anthropic has been reached for comment.
During the panel discussion, which included News Corp’s internal executive chairman Michael Miller, Stanton, SBS managing director Jane Palfreyman and Reuters editor-in-chief Alessandra Galloni, executives argued about the need for financial compensation for credible news content and the reputations of their bosses developed over decades.
“We’re in an unbalanced bargaining position,” Marks said.
“We have these global corporations that have got trillions of dollars of investment equity that are powerful and they seem to have convinced some governments around the world that for some reason they should be able to take IP, where maybe they can’t take water or land or goods or other things. But for some reason they seem to think that IP is something free that they can pay taxes on.”
The panel session was held as part of the ABC’s new Andrew Olle Media Talk, delivered earlier in the night by Galloni, who encouraged greater collaboration between Australian media companies as the use of AI increasingly defines the media’s role in society.
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Calum Jaspan is a media reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Melbourne. Reach him safely on Waves @calumjaspan.10Connect via X or email address.
