One of Australia’s leading tech entrepreneurs has shot down the idea that Australia’s copyright laws should be weakened to allow AI to train on the intellectual property of authors, artists, journalists and the creative sector.
Mutinex co-founder and global chief executive Henry Innis, whose company uses AI technology to provide marketers with predictive analysis on how their media and marketing investments are performing, told B&T that intellectual property should be protected under copyright law.
Innis argues that exemptions to big tech would not only harm the owners of intellectual property, but inevitably leads to AI slop, much poorer AI engines, and is hypocritical.
“Changing copyright in favour of AI feels like a really dumb idea to me,” said Innis, who was responding to a Productivity Commission interim report that is investigating whether technology firms should be exempt from laws that prevent companies mining text and data to train AI models.
“When you put your intellectual ideas out into the market, they should be protected. If we let AI train on everything and pinch everybody’s intellect, eventually you give people no incentive to share ideas, and you erode the whole value of thinking.
“What that will mean is people will just put AI slop out everywhere instead. And what will end up happening is that the Large Language Model will be training AI on AI data and more AI data on repeat, and what that leads to is a concept called model collapse.”
Model collapse refers to a scenario where future AI systems get progressively dumber due to the increase of AI-generated data on the internet.
“If we take away original thought, and we take away the value of original thought, the right for someone to be compensated for original thought, eventually we take away the incentive to give large language models, or other foundational models, good data that pushes the boundaries of how they think,” Innis explained.
“The models will get dumber long term, because the incentive structure will create poorer data going in.”
Big tech hypocrisy
Not all Australian technology leaders share Innis’ views. At a National Press Club briefing, Atlassian boss Scott Farqhuar called for an overhaul of Australia’s copyright rules, arguing that exemptions for text and data mining to train large language models would unlock billions of dollars of foreign investment into Australia.
Farquhar said Australia’s copyright laws are out of step with other countries.
Innis scoffed at the notion that loosening copyright laws would be an altruistic act that would benefit Australia, questioning why Big Tech firms don’t publicly share their own IP.
“If they truly would believe this was about altruistically scaling the economies and data, they would be open sourcing a lot more sort of what they do,” he said.
“Secondly, they would be trying to share a lot more of their data engineering and scaling practices publicly. You can’t say that it’s altruistic for the country, and ‘everyone should do it, but me’. The tech companies have shown a remarkable ability to be able to cut deals for content when it suits them. They cut a deal with Reddit for $70-$80 million last year. They cut a deal with News Corp and, arguably, Musk bought X for the content. So there’s definitely a willingness to pay.”
Innis’ point that Big Tech should pay for the content that its scrapes to train AI engines was reiterated earlier this week by News Corp Australia executive chair Michael Miller.
“If big tech wants free and open access to other people’s intellectual property are they prepared to give us free and open access to theirs?,” he said.
“Surely the greatest boon for start up tech innovators would be to have access to big tech’s algorithms? I look forward to them making that concession.”
‘They should be paying’
Last year, News Corp secured a multi-year deal with OpenAI, reportedly worth more that $250 million, to allow OpenAI access to News Corp’s global suite of publications, which in Australia includes The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and the NT News.
Miller said that Australia will be harmed if it trades away its cultural, social and economic sovereignty, and that there was “no genuine evidence that Australia’s copyright laws are stifling innovation or investment”.
“No other industry gets the right to steal other people’s products for their own benefit and nor should big tech,” he added.
The Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance–the union for Australia’s creatives sector–has also called for tougher regulations to stop AI theft.
MEAA chief executive Erin Madeley said the Productivity Commission’s interim recommendations were akin to “throwing Australia’s creative and media workers under a bus”.
“There are no recommendations in this report that protect Australian workers or creative assets,” she said. “Our members have serious concerns about the rapid and unregulated rise of AI and its impact on day-to-day work, job security, and future employment prospects, as well as the impact of the loss of human-led creativity for Australia’s unique culture.
“We know that Australian voices, music, and artwork have been scraped overseas, that ChatGPT is substituting the work of our journalists, and that AI-generated clone hosts have been used for radio programs – with no disclosure to audiences.
“Companies like Meta, which recorded $US165 billion in revenue last year, should be paying for the creative assets, works, and ideas that they have stolen, but that is not happening. That’s theft – plain and simple.”
