When it was revealed that Meta had used a dataset of pirated books to train its latest AI model, Llama, Australian authors were furious. Works by writers including Liane Moriarty, Tim Winton, Melissa Lucashenko, Christos Tsiolkas and many others had been scraped from the online shadow library LibGen without permission.
It was just the latest in a series of incidents where published books have been fed into commercial AI systems without the knowledge of their creators, and without any credit or compensation.
Our new report, Australian Authors’ Sentiment on Generative AI, co-authored with Shujie Liang and Tessa Barrington, offers the first large-scale empirical study of how Australian authors and illustrators feel about this rapidly evolving technology. It reveals just how widespread the concern is.
