Kylie Minogue, AC/DC, Peter Carey, Yothu Yindi Among Millions of Australian Creatives Whose Works Were Used to Train AI Without Permission
Australian Financial Review
ENRICHED
Details
- Date Published
- 19 June 2026
- Priority Score
- 2
- Australian
- Yes
- Created
- 19 June 2026, 08:00 am
Description
A new database of the pirated material used to train AI models reveals millions of Australian works.
Summary
This reporting highlights the systematic scraping of 125 million creative works, including those of prominent Australian artists, to train frontier AI models without authorization. The use of the 'AI Watchdog' database underscores major transparency failures in how developers acquire training data for high-capacity models. These findings intensify global debates over data governance and intellectual property rights, forming a critical component of the regulatory response to AI development. For Australia, this represents a significant intersection of national cultural preservation and the enforcement of ethical AI development standards.
Body
Life & LuxuryArts & CultureCopyrightPrint articleMichael BaileyArts & Culture editorJun 19, 2026 – 4.19pmSongs by Kylie Minogue, scripts by George Miller and novels by Peter Carey are among 125 million works scraped for the training of artificial intelligence models without permission, a new database has revealed.The Atlantic’s AI Watchdog database was launched this week, built by the American publication using information from AI developer forums and public research collaboration platforms such as Hugging Face.Loading...SaveLog in or Subscribe to save articleShareCopy linkCopiedEmailLinkedInTwitterFacebookCopy linkCopiedShare via...Gift this articleSubscribe to gift this articleGift 5 articles to anyone you choose each month when you subscribe.Subscribe nowAlready a subscriber? LoginLicense articleFollow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.Find out moreRead MoreCopyrightAINew musicAFR WeekendFetching latest articles