Indonesia is unveiling one of the biggest reforms for the artificial intelligence niche. This could make it the first Southeast Asian country to define how artificial intelligence incorporates into the copyright law. Instead of deeming artificial intelligence as an author, the draft legislation aims to draw a legal boundary. AI can help in creating the content, but the rights should remain with humans. The proposal comes amidst federal authorities worldwide struggle to balance innovation with creator rights. This makes Indonesia an early test case for whether copyright law can govern AI without granting authorship to machines.
Why Is Indonesia’s AI Copyright Proposal Different?
Unlike other nations that depend on court rulings or copyright guidance, Indonesia wants to embed it directly into its copyright law. The bill states that artificial intelligence-assisted work will receive copyright protection only where it involves human creative input, and fully AI-generated content will not get the protection. The difference is the foundation of the bill. Rather than debating whether artificial intelligence can become the author, Indonesia is trying to secure human authorship while still allowing creators to use artificial intelligence as a tool for help.
The draft also launches several AI-specific guardrails. It would require disclosure whenever artificial intelligence is used in creating content, barring AI systems from imitating a creator’s writing style, and require copyrighted works used for AI training to fall under a licensing agreement or fair use provisions. If the bill is passed, the legislation would create one of the clearest legal positions in Asia that artificial intelligence is an assistant, not a copyright holder.
The proposal does not restrict itself to defining AI-assisted works. It also seeks to regulate how artificial intelligence companies and platforms use the written material. The draft would require platforms to compensate the publishers when displaying news link previews, reusing journalistic content, or using news articles to train the artificial intelligence model. Payments would flow through federal authority supervised collective management organizations before being distributed to the writers.
What Would Indonesia’s AI Law Mean for Publishers?
The draft closely reflects a comprehensive global shift in publisher rights. Google recently introduced publisher controls allowing media houses to opt out of AI-generated search summaries without affecting their search rankings. It emphasizes the growing pressure over how artificial intelligence systems use journalism. Meanwhile, regulators in countries such as Nigeria have also questioned whether major tech giants are using publisher content without permission or compensation.
Indonesia’s proposal therefore expands beyond authorship. It attempts to manage both the output of AI systems and the data used to create them. Failure to comply could expose technology companies to sanctions, including the possible revocation of their Indonesian operating licenses.
How Indonesia’s AI Copyright Law Compares Globally?
The draft highlights a huge concern which Indonesia’s law ministry has proposed. It says frontier AI has affected copyright mechanisms and argues that failing to govern it could affect human creation. Rather than treating AI-generated material with the same value as human-created work, the proposal attempts to safeguard the idea that copyright exists to reward human intellect. This process also resonates with emerging international thinking.
The European Union’s AI Act already requires accountability for certain AI-generated content, including deepfakes, while copyright authorities in both the United States and Singapore have similarly required that copyright protection depends on human contribution. Indonesia, however, would go a step ahead by embedding those principles directly into the law instead of relying on guidance. The draft asks whether copyright law should govern how AI is used, rather than identifying AI itself as a participant.
What Happens Next With Indonesia’s AI Copyright Bill?
The draft is under government review and could still change before becoming a law. It emphasizes how AI governance is moving beyond safety into questions of creative authority. Indonesia recently joined 29 countries supporting a new global AI regulation initiative announced in Shanghai, while China has promoted international cooperation around open-weight AI for human oversight. Similarly, federal authorities across the globe continue to debate over AI training data, publisher compensation, and creator rights. Indonesia’s proposal brings those debates under one umbrella.
Rather than asking whether AI should receive the copyright, the country is trying to define the rules under which humans can continue receiving it while using increasingly powerful AI tools. That makes the draft more than a reform. It could be one of the real-world tests of whether copyright law can successfully govern AI without treating it as an author.
