A FORMER Fremantle Hungerford Prize winner has offered a searing rebuke after it was revealed her novel was used to train text-generative AI.
Molly Schmidt, who won the City of Fremantle’s 2022 Hungerford Award for her novel, Salt River Road, was among several Australian authors whose work was lifted by Meta from illegal book repository LibGen, to train its generative AI tool.
Ms Schmidt says she was “shocked and saddened” to discover that her work had been stolen and then used to train AI to generate literature in an effort to “make authors obsolete” while being in complete breach of Copyright.
“It’s such an invasion of our rights, and such a disrespect into the work that goes into writing a book… authors don’t write for money, we write because we care about the topics we write about,” Ms Schmidt said.
“We do it to explore and examine humanity, consider the world we find ourselves in and create stories that allow readers to both escape and delve deeper into the human experience.
“Writing is about sharing emotion, both the shine and the grit of life, and it takes a human to do that with integrity.”
There are broader and more sensitive implications for books like Salt River Road being stolen and exploited: the book was based on Ms Schmidt’s own experiences with grief and loss and is also contains deeply personal Indigenous content.
“I lived through the loss of my father to terminal cancer when I was a child, and I turned to writing initially to process this loss… Meta has stolen art I created out of trauma,” Ms Schmidt said.
“My novel was also informed by years of cultural research with Noongar Elders from my hometown where Salt River Road is set…my approach to writing Noongar characters within my book was overseen by these Elders and I wrote some cultural content only with their collaboration and consent.
“Meta stealing my book is also Meta stealing my research and the Elders’ cultural property.”
Works from WA authors including Holden Sheppard, Rachael Johns, and Tim Winton were also on the LibGen site.
Ms Schmidt says it’s “unacceptable” that Meta “chose not to operate legally” when taking her content.
But she would not consent to her work being used even if it was legal.
“To be clear, this is illegal and in breach of copyright laws, but due to the exponential growth of AI technology it seems that despite this it is the small players [like] writers, artists, and musicians, who find ourselves unprotected,” Ms Schmidt said.
“The two things missing here are choice and payment, and we deserve both.”
by KATHERINE KRAAYVANGER