Australian musicians sound warning note after Nick Cave, Kylie and many more slurped into AI training tool

Australian musicians are expressing outrage after discovering their original songs have been scraped from the internet and used to train artificial intelligence models without their consent. Paul Dempsey of Something For Kate and Bernard Fanning of Powderfinger are among the artists who found their entire musical output included in datasets used for AI training.

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It’s frustrating this is happening. Every negotiated agreement and contract I’ve ever gone into in my career with whatever entity or record label is all just rendered useless.

Dempsey stated that the situation renders all his past negotiated agreements with record labels useless, as artists' ability to secure fair terms for their content is being eroded. "It’s frustrating this is happening. Every negotiated agreement and contract I’ve ever gone into in my career with whatever entity or record label is all just rendered useless," he told AAP.

Bernard Fanning argued that using original songs to produce AI content is dehumanizing. "Do we want robots telling our stories and synthesising our feelings? Because it’s not human. The whole point of art is to humanise our feelings, to express how we’re feeling across the whole range of emotions," he said. Songwriter Darren Hayes echoed these sentiments, describing the use of his 30-year career's work as "stolen."

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Do we want robots telling our stories and synthesising our feelings? Because it’s not human. The whole point of art is to humanise our feelings, to express how we’re feeling across the whole range of emotions.

Music licensing organization APRA AMCOS confirmed that major tech platforms have not engaged in discussions, instead lobbying governments and proposing policy papers. The datasets, including millions of music tracks and lyrics, were compiled by groups like Sleeping AI and LAION. While inclusion in a dataset doesn't definitively prove usage by AI companies, it serves as evidence of creative work being collected.

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I absolutely feel violated that all of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours, blood, sweat and tears that I’ve put into my music, along with every other musician, has been stolen and served up like french fries to a piece of software that spits out shit.