Sonar music composer, Antony Partos, and the Australian Guild of Screen Composers will launch Human Made at Wednesday’s APRA AMCOS Screen Music Awards. It opposes using Australian creative work to train AI without creators’ consent, licensing or fair payment as the government considers weakening copyright protections in favour of AI giants.

In a visible show of solidarity, composers, musicians and industry leaders at the Brisbane ceremony will wear campaign badges shaped like a record bearing the © copyright symbol. 

“The message is simple: Australian creativity is not free training data,” says Partos. “If AI needs copyrighted material to train its models, then a licence system needs to be implemented to compensate those artists who chose to opt in.”

The irony of the timing is not lost on Partos, who heads up the Guild’s Industrial Relations Committee, and is nominated for:

• Best Feature Film Score and Best Soundtrack Album – Christy (with Sydney Sweeney)
  
• Best Music for a Television Drama – Disney’s The Artful Dodger

• Best Music for a Documentary – Edge of Life 

Prtos is a co-founder of Sonar Music, whose catalogue spans television, film and global campaigns for Coca-Cola, Toyota, Qantas and Commonwealth Bank. Fellow Sonar co-founder, Matteo Zingales, is also up for Best Music for a Television Drama with Sunny Nights, as the AI copyright debate intensifies.

Licensing systems including APRA already licenses music and collects royalties to compensate creators without changing copyright law – but has not been approached by AI giants. 

 Australian film and TV drama production expenditure hit a record AU$2.7 billion in 2024–25 – a 43% increase compared to the previous year, underscoring the economic significance of an industry built on human creativity.

“The Screen Music Awards are our industry’s annual gathering, recognising the extraordinary talent, originality and hard work behind Australian film and television,” Partos commented. “But while we’re celebrating the achievements of our composers, we’re also having to fight to protect their future.”

The stakes extend well beyond the music industry, he adds, with entire advertisements created using AI and using AIgenerated music – often without permission. Sonar Music composers are already being asked to recreate AI-generated tracks, including for adverts “so productions can claim there’s a human author”.

He says it raises serious questions about authorship, copyright and whether human composers are being used to give AI-generated material a veneer of legitimacy. “It’s an extraordinary position to put a composer in. We can’t copy something that may have been built from illegally harvested creative work. If the government is serious about supporting Australian culture and innovation, then creators need a seat at the table.”

Cover image: Antony Partos by Declan Blackall, Human Made badge