OpenAI opens door for payments to Australian creatives as part of AI data centre drive

OpenAI told a Joint Parliamentary Committee that it might be willing to pay money into a fund for Australian creative workers. The payments would help compensate them for using Australian content to train AI models.

OpenAI says it may be willing to pay into a fund that rewards creative workers for work used to train its AI models. This could help clear the way for billions of dollars in data centre investments in Australia.

OpenAI gave this indication in documents submitted on Tuesday to a parliamentary inquiry into the use of AI in Australia. The company was answering a question from Labor MP Tim Watts, who asked whether it would accept a policy requiring it to pay fees into a fund for Australian creators.

“Potentially,” the company wrote. “This would depend on the activities and data that are in scope, the opt-out requirement, total fees and whether the scheme provides legal certainty. All of these factors, in sum, would have to be competitive with other jurisdictions, particularly the US.”

OpenAI's answer came with several conditions. Still, its willingness to consider such a plan could offer a way to move past the deadlock over copyright.

Anthropic and OpenAI have both shown interest in spending billions of dollars on data centres in Australia. They say Australia has plenty of land and strong potential for renewable energy, both of which are needed to build AI infrastructure. But AI companies in the US use a legal rule called fair use to train models on copyrighted material. Australian law generally requires them to get a licence or reach an agreement to pay for that use.

Last month, OpenAI senior vice president of global policy Ann O’Leary told The Australian that Australia could become the first country outside the US and China to host AI model training. She said the decision “is really a copyright question more than a renewable energy question.”

“Our company isn’t ready to have that conversation if we can’t get through the gating problem of the copyright barriers.”

A plan to pay creative workers through a shared fund would be different from the individual deals OpenAI and other AI companies have made with media companies, including Politico publisher Axel Springer and the Financial Times.

OpenAI told the committee that these deals are “primarily aimed at displaying substantial excerpts of journalism with attribution and links.” This means they mainly allow OpenAI to show parts of news stories while naming and linking to the source, rather than paying for content used to train its models.

In its response to the joint committee, OpenAI said its Australian business recorded $3.86 million in revenue between 14 May and 31 December 2025. Its larger deals were likely recorded by its US parent company. OpenAI counts Commonwealth Bank, Coles and Virgin among its Australian business customers.

Last December, OpenAI signed a memorandum of understanding with Australian data centre operator NextDC. Under the agreement, OpenAI has expressed interest in becoming a major customer at a planned $7 billion data centre campus in Sydney. However, the agreement is not legally binding.

OpenAI previously reached an agreement to build a huge data centre campus in north-east England. But earlier this year, it withdrew from the deal, pointing to UK regulations and energy costs.

Meanwhile, Anthropic has acknowledged that paying into a fund for creative workers is possible, but it has not backed such a policy. Earlier this month, its general counsel, Jeff Bleich, told the joint parliamentary committee that Australia should “forge its own system to provide legal certainty under copyright.”

“There is an opportunity to create a uniquely Australian framework that can deliver legal certainty for training-scale investment while generating direct support for Australian creators,” Bleich said.