Indonesia Wants to Ban AI From Cloning Your Artists. Google Is Already Pushing Back.
Indonesia's copyright rewrite would outlaw AI style-cloning and put training data under licensing. Here's why it matters for labels across the Global South.
· 4 min read
If you run a label, manage artists, or license catalog, the question keeping you up at night is not whether AI can copy a singer's voice. It can. The question is whether any government will actually make that illegal, and whether the rule will come with teeth or just a strongly worded PDF.
One country is now trying to answer that. And a very large American company does not like the answer.
Indonesia is preparing a rewrite of its copyright law that would make it the first country in Southeast Asia to write artificial intelligence directly into the statute, according to Music Business Worldwide. A draft of the bill would ban using AI to imitate a creator's "distinctive style" and would force anyone using AI to make content to disclose that they did.
That is the part the music business should read twice. Style and voice cloning is one of the industry's most contested fronts, and Indonesia is proposing to close the door on it at the level of national law, not through a lawsuit that takes three years to resolve.
What the draft actually does
Per a draft reviewed by Reuters, the bill would do three big things at once. It bans AI imitation of a creator's distinctive style. It requires disclosure when AI is used to make content. And it makes the use of copyrighted works to train AI models subject to fair-use limits or licensing agreements.
Read that last point slowly. Training data becomes a licensing question, not a free-for-all. That is the entire ballgame for rightsholders.
The rewrite would replace Indonesia's current statute, Law No. 28 of 2014, and would cover video games, photography, journalism, and film. AI-assisted works would only get copyright protection if they clear a human-involvement test, and fully machine-generated works would be excluded, Reuters reported.
There is a real gap here. The draft does not define how much human input is enough, and that vagueness will decide which AI-assisted tracks actually win protection. Expect that to be the most-lawyered clause in the whole bill.
The draft also routes money through state-supervised collective management organizations. Platforms would have to pay compensation for aggregating, republishing, or link-previewing news, and for using it to train AI, with proceeds flowing to rightsholders through Indonesia's national collective body, the LMKN.
Why this has teeth
Most AI-copyright talk is toothless because there is no enforcement mechanism that scares a trillion-dollar company. Indonesia's draft has one. Platforms that fail to comply could have their local business permits revoked, Reuters reported. That sanction lands squarely on Google and other US tech firms operating in the country.
Losing your license to operate in one of Southeast Asia's largest music markets is not a rounding error. It is a reason to send lawyers.
The bill's chief government backer is Hermansyah Siregar, who leads Indonesia's Directorate General of Intellectual Property and confirmed the draft's authenticity. "The development of generative AI has disrupted the copyright framework," he told Reuters. "If unregulated, it could kill human creation."
Google's move
Google has emerged as the loudest critic. The company warned the overhaul could choke the growth of Indonesia's digital economy. "Rigid, overbroad mandates, however, would harm local creators, slow innovation, and leave Indonesia as an international outlier, ultimately discouraging the investment needed to drive its digital future," it said, promising to keep engaging with the government.
Translate that from lobbyist into English: nice digital economy you've got there, be a shame if the investment stopped. It is the same posture Google struck when it declared AI training. Indonesia's draft is the direct rebuttal.
To be fair to the critics, IP lawyer Ari Juliano Gema told Reuters the bill could unsettle tech companies because it appears to conflate commercial AI use with research use. That is a legitimate drafting problem, not just corporate whining. A law that treats a lab experiment the same as a commercial generator will get gamed or gutted.
Why the Global South angle matters
The regional map is now split. Indonesia is choosing licensing and compensation. Singapore's 2021 Copyright Act lets companies copy protected works to train AI, including commercially, per MBW. Japan has taken a similarly permissive line, while the EU's AI Act sits somewhere in between.
For labels and publishers, that fragmentation is the whole story. If Indonesia holds the line, it becomes the template that other developing markets copy, and your licensing frameworks in the region stop being an afterthought and start being a product you build deliberately.
The pressure is already visible upstream. Music Ally reported that TikTok is testing likeness-detection tech with partner Jumio to flag deepfakes, while Patreon is now blocking AI-training crawlers at the network level. Platforms are moving because rightsholders are getting hotter on likeness infringement. Indonesia is just the first to try turning that heat into statute.
Suno's voice-capture tools, Udio's licensing deals with Universal and Warner, the RIAA lawsuits: all of it assumes the legal ground is still being negotiated. Indonesia is trying to pour concrete. Watch who shows up to stop it, and watch which markets take notes.
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