Indonesia's Copyright Bill Puts Human Input at the Centre of AI Rules

By Dafa Attas

Photo: ptra / Pixabay

Indonesia's plan to replace its 2014 Copyright Law is moving from consultation into detailed drafting, and artificial intelligence has become one of its defining questions. During a working visit by the House of Representatives' Legislation Body (Baleg) to Yogyakarta on Thursday 29 October 2026, the Directorate General of Intellectual Property (DJKI) set out how the government wants the bill to treat machine output: protection should follow human creativity, and a work produced entirely by an AI system, with no creative contribution from a person, should fall outside copyright.

Where the bill stands

Director General Hermansyah Siregar told the meeting at the Ministry of Law regional office that the government has already handed the DPR its list of issues for the bill, known as the DIM. According to DJKI's own account, that list covers 1,117 points on the articles and 536 points on the elucidation, a sign of how far the text could move from the current law.

Habib Syarief Muhammad, who led the Baleg delegation, said the bill is now in level I deliberation with the government. He described its goals as updating the rules for a digital economy, giving creators and holders of related rights stronger protection, and keeping a fair balance between economic rights and public access. DPR news service Parlementaria reported that the draft also deals with the responsibilities of digital platforms, traditional cultural expressions, licensing and royalty management, and works of journalism.

The AI line the government is drawing

The government's position, as DJKI presented it, has two parts. First, a work made wholly by AI is not a protected work. Second, where a person uses AI as part of the creative process, the share of AI involvement should be disclosed honestly, so that examiners and courts can see what the human actually contributed.

That approach is close to how several other offices handle the issue in practice, by asking applicants to identify and exclude machine-generated material. What Indonesia appears to be adding is a statutory hook: the disclosure idea would sit in the law itself rather than only in office guidance.

A few days earlier, on 26 October, Baleg chair Bob Hasan made a similar point during a visit to Bali. Pantau reported him as calling AI a tool and saying that people, not machines, remain the deciding factor in creative work. He also flagged the use of existing works to train AI systems as a matter the bill needs to address, which is a separate and harder question than authorship of the output.

Royalties, libraries and piracy

AI is only one strand. DJKI also asked for input on a resale right that would let painters share in later sales of their works, and on a public lending right that would pay authors when their books are borrowed from libraries. Habib warned that any library levy must not end up discouraging reading or burying libraries in paperwork, according to the DPR account.

On enforcement, the government is consulting on whether copyright offences should stop being complaint-based crimes, meaning police could act without waiting for a rights holder to file a report. DJKI also wants a free channel for reporting pirated content and sites, and a larger role for mediators at DJKI and its regional offices.

In Bali, cultural figures asked for fair benefit sharing when traditional expressions are used. Performing arts scholar I Made Bandem proposed a collective management organisation for Balinese arts, led by the provincial government, to collect and pass on royalties to creators and customary communities. Choreographer and scholar I Wayan Dibia stressed protecting traditional works used in tourism.

What to watch

The disclosure idea raises practical questions the drafters have not yet answered in public: who checks the declared percentage, what happens if it is wrong, and whether the same test applies to recordation at DJKI and to disputes in court. Training data is another open point. A rule on authorship does nothing for creators whose works are copied into training sets, and that is where Bali's artists and other groups are likely to press hardest.

Indonesian angle. For Indonesian creators, studios and agencies, the safest habit now is to keep records of human choices in any AI-assisted project: prompts, edits, selection and arrangement. If the bill keeps the disclosure duty, those records will be the evidence that a work qualifies, and they already help in any dispute under the current law.

Sources

• DJKI: DJKI and DPR discuss protection of works in the AI era and wider access to royalties (29 Oct 2026)
• DPR Parlementaria: Baleg on technology and book royalties in the copyright bill (29 Oct 2026)
• Pantau: DPR wants the copyright bill to regulate AI (29 Oct 2026)
• Tabloid Senayan: Baleg on AI and book royalties