<https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/sep/28/australian-books-training-ai-books3-stolen-pirated>
Thousands of books from some of Australia’s most celebrated authors have
potentially been caught up in what Booker prize-winning novelist Richard
Flanagan has called “the biggest act of copyright theft in history”.
The works have allegedly been pirated by the US-based Books3 dataset and used
to train generative AI for corporations such as Meta and Bloomberg.
Flanagan, who found 10 of his works, including the multi-international
award-winning 2013 novel The Narrow Road to the Deep North, on the Books3
dataset, told Guardian Australia he was deeply shocked by the discovery made
several days ago.
“I felt as if my soul had been strip mined and I was powerless to stop it,” he
said in a statement.
“This is the biggest act of copyright theft in history.”
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The Australian Publishers Association confirmed to Guardian Australia on
Wednesday that as many as 18,000 fiction and nonfiction titles with Australian
ISBNs (unique international standard book numbers) appeared to be affected by
the copyright infringement, although it is not yet clear what proportion of
these are Australian editions of internationally authored books.
“We’re still working through [the data] to work out the impact in terms of
Australian authors,” APA spokesperson Stuart Glover said.
“This is a massive legal and ethical challenge for the publishing industry and
for authors globally.”
A search tool published on Monday by US media platform The Atlantic and
uploaded by the US Authors Guild on Wednesday revealed the works of Peter
Carey, Helen Garner, Kate Grenville, Anna Funder, Christos Tsiolkas and Thomas
Keneally, as well as Flanagan and dozens of other high-profile Australian
authors, were included in the pirated dataset containing more than 180,000
titles.
On Thursday, the Australian Society of Authors issued a statement saying it was
“horrified” to learn that the works of Australian writers were being used to
train artificial intelligence without permission from the authors.
ASA chief executive, Olivia Lanchester, described the Books3 dataset as piracy
on an industrial scale.
“Authors appropriately feel outraged,” Lanchester said. “The fact is this
technology relies upon books, journals, essays written by authors, yet
permission was not sought nor compensation granted.”
Lanchester said the Australian literary industry, while not objecting per se to
emerging technologies such as AI, was deeply concerned about the lack of
transparency evident in the development and monetisation of AI by global tech
companies.
“Turning a blind eye to the legitimate rights of copyright owners threatens to
diminish already precarious creative careers,” she said.
“The enrichment of a few powerful companies is at the cost of thousands of
individual creators. This is not how a fair market functions.”
Josephine Johnston, chief executive of Australia’s Copyright Agency, described
the Books3 development as “a free kick to big tech” at the expense of
Australia’s creative and cultural life.
“We’re going to need greater transparency – how these tools have been
developed, trained, how they operate – before people can truly understand what
their legal rights might be,” she said.
“We seem to be in this terrible position now where content owners – remembering
that the vast majority of them will be individual authors – may actually have
to take out court cases to enforce their rights.”
Australian copyright law protects creators of original content from data
scraping.
Litigation in the US against ChatGPT creator OpenAI over use of allegedly
pirated book datasets, Books1 and Books2 (which do not appear to be affiliated
with Books3) has already commenced.
In July, North American horror/fantasy writers Mona Awad (author of Bunny) and
Paul Tremblay (author of The Cabin at the End of the World) filed a lawsuit in
a San Francisco federal court, alleging ChatGPT unlawfully digested their books
as part of its AI training data.
On 28 August, OpenAI filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that the
authors “misconceive the scope of copyright, failing to take into account the
limitations and exceptions (including fair use) that properly leave room for
innovations like the large language models now at the forefront of artificial
intelligence”.
On 19 September the Writers Guild and 17 of its members, including bestselling
novelists John Grisham, George RR Martin and Jodi Picoult, filed a complaint in
a New York district court against OpenAI, seeking redress for “flagrant and
harmful infringements” of guild members’ registered copyrights.
In a statement on its website, the guild says while it is aware that companies
such as Meta and Bloomberg have used the Books3 dataset to train their LLMs, it
is not yet clear whether OpenAI is using Books3 to train its ChatGPT models GPT
3.5 or GPT 4.
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Guardian Australia has sought comment from OpenAI, which has yet to officially
respond to the guild’s complaint, and Meta.
On 4 September, US technology magazine Wired reported that a Danish anti-piracy
group called Rights Alliance had been told by Bloomberg that the company did
not plan to train future versions of its BloombergGPT using Books3.
Bloomberg declined to respond to the Guardian’s queries.
The APA said the global nature of the issue would present significant
challenges in enforcement and prosecution, and has joined the authors’ society
in calling for AI technologies to be regulated.
Consultation closed last month for a Department of Industry, Science and
Resources discussion paper on supporting responsible AI.
A parliamentary inquiry is under way examining the use of generative artificial
intelligence in the Australian education system.
Flanagan said it was up to the Australian government to act to protect
Australia’s writers.
“It has power and we do not,” he said.
“If it cares for our culture it must now stand up and fight for it.”
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