While the federal government set up a Copyright and AI Reference Group late last year, and a Senate inquiry on it is due to report next month, APRA AMCOS chief executive Dean Ormston said more needed to be done.

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“We urge the Australian and New Zealand governments to implement EU-style transparency guidelines on tech companies now to disclose the content that has been copied and used without permission to build AI platforms, with sanctions for non-disclosure. Without this, our industry is facing a very bleak future,” Ormston said.

Singer-songwriter Missy Higgins, who will be inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame later this year, warned against blurring the lines between genuine emotions and a machine-generated version.

“It might be possible for ‘intelligence’ to be ‘artificial’, but most music is driven by the heart, not the head, and I don’t think artificial feelings can stir the soul,” she said.

Melbourne-born Tina Arena, who will perform later this year as part of the Victorian government’s Always Live program, said AI would fundamentally impact songwriting.

“Artificial intelligence is just that ... artificial. The beauty of human creation is the work of alchemy, not an algorithm,” she said.

Former Powderfinger frontman Bernard Fanning, soon to tour as part of Fanning Dempsey National Park, said he felt the use of copyrighted music to train AI for use in composing, was neither legal nor moral.

“This goes against the very idea of composing something new,” he said, “and removes the humanity from the creation of art, which deletes its very purpose.”