Meta's AI theft and the more immediate threats to authors
If you, an author, wish to quote a line from a poem by Ted Hughes in your forthcoming work of fiction, you will need to set aside considerable amounts of time and possibly money in order to obtain permission to do so. Perhaps your character must quote a poem by Hughes in a pivotal scene. If this is the case, you will need to lodge a request via Faber & Faber, which handles the rights for the Hughes estate. And even if you do get permission to quote, know that the estate has form when it comes to withdrawing permission for use of copyright material. If you are thinking of making your character a Beatles-obsessive who has a lyric for every occasion, forget it.
The Impact on Authors
Publishers generally consider obtaining such permissions to be the responsibility of authors, and so too payment of the licensing fee, which can be considerable. If you can’t afford to pay the fee, or don’t want to, or simply don’t have time to wait for the permissions before publication date, you will need to amend your manuscript. These copyright restrictions often take authors by surprise, and many find the intricacies of the fair use exemption to be frustrating and onerous. Why can an essayist quote a poem, at least under some circumstances, but not a novelist? Why is fair use policed more rigorously in trade publishing than academic publishing? Why does a magazine or journal editor let a quote go through, but not a book publisher? Fair use lies at the heart of the copyright regimes that protect the rights of authors and allow rights-holders to reap an income from creative work.
The Emergence of AI Writing Tools
If authors are vexed by the requirement to obtain permission to quote and pay license fees, they may take consolation that their intellectual property will similarly be protected, should someone wish to quote their work down the track. The shared conventions and practices around fair use have been shattered by the advent of voracious large language models, also known as AI writing tools. Copyright law has always struggled to keep up with technologies of writing, reproduction and distribution, and has often been viewed by artists as out of step with creative practice.
The Controversy Surrounding Meta's AI Theft
There are dozens of books by Ted Hughes on the LibGen database, which Meta — as we all now know — has allegedly been using in breach of copyright to train the latest iteration of its AI platform, Llama. Meta did not approach the Hughes estate for permission to use this material, nor any of the authors of the millions of books and journal articles it has been using to enhance the proficiency of its generative writing tool. Its defence? Fair use. Class actions are underway.
Authors' Reactions
Authors are angry they weren’t asked, angry they aren’t getting paid, and the insult is compounded by the fact that the breach of copyright is being used to enhance tools that are an existential threat to the livelihood of writers.
Immediate Threats to Authors
As the class action against Meta inches forward, generative writing tools will likely become more sophisticated. Writers and their advocates will continue to call for forthright federal government intervention on this question — but who would blame them for pessimism? Whatever confidence the ALP won with its Creative Australia policy was squandered by its disgraceful treatment of Khaled Sabsabi and Michael Dagostino.
Meanwhile, the use of AI tools is widespread in universities. Creative writing academics attend university training seminars on how to integrate AI tools into their teaching and research in the morning, and then in the afternoon lead their students through discussions about the ethics of using AI and the moral obligations of writers and readers to each other.
One such teacher is novelist Felicity Castagna, whose students have grown up online and have become accustomed to consuming and producing free content. They have a sophisticated understanding of how online gift economies work, but ethical considerations aren’t always at the forefront of their minds.
Conclusion
Meta’s theft matters, certainly, but let’s not let it obscure the immediate threats to a thriving literary culture in Australia. Australian literature has for decades been woefully underfunded relative to other art forms. Australia Reads has launched an impressive campaign, but there is no indication that arts policy is going to be an election issue, let alone support for writers.
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