Principal Dave Stewart Returns to State of Social ’25
We’re thrilled to announce that Head of Intellectual Property, Principal Dave Stewart will be returning to State of Social 2025, presenting a brand-new, highly topical session titled:
“AI and Copyright: The Future is Already Here, Just Not Evenly Distributed”.
Dave is a specialist intellectual property lawyer, internationally recognised for his expertise in legal brand clearance, IP licensing, and trade mark oppositions.
Presentation Highlights
In this session, Dave will unpack the rapidly evolving legal landscape around AI and copyright.
On 13 August 2025 the Australian arts sector blasted the Federal government’s Productivity Commission’s proposal to permit technology companies to use copyright-protected material to train AIs as a “fair dealing” exemption.
The Productivity Commission’s report entitled Harnessing Data and Digital Technology, argues for a fair use exception to copyright law that would allow technology companies to use creative works to train AI models without notice, license, or payment.
The Text and Data Mining exemption on copyright proposed by the Productivity Commission would provide access to copyright to AI owners (often, large overseas technology companies) in the belief that would improve productivity for the Australian economy.
The inequity in such a model has lead to technological solutions: this week, the Australian Financial Review reported that, “CSIRO, in partnership with the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre and the University of Chicago, have come up with a way of subtly altering content to make images unreadable to AI models.”
But in June 2025, a US court found that AI company Anthropic use of original books to train AIs was not an infringement of copyright. In the same month, Meta was found by a US judge not to have infringed copyright in books used to train AIs. And in the UK in July, Getty Images’ copyright claim against Stability AI fell apart over the course of the trial.
What is going on? Fresh(-ish) off a plane from an AI contracts drafting course in London, Dave Stewart breaks it down, and says why the risk of AI replacing creative jobs is over-hyped because recent AI advances are underwhelming.
Event Details:
Conference Dates: Tuesday 26 – Wednesday 27 August 2025
Dave’s Panel Session: Tuesday 26 August | 4:00 PM – 4:40 PM
Dave’s Presentation: Wednesday 27 August | 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM
Don’t miss this chance to hear from one of Australia’s leading voices in IP and tech law, grab your tickets here.
Back to news
Read article