AI is taking First Nations art and turning it into “Temu slop”, the Pitjantjatjara artist Sally Scales has said.
Scales, the chair of the National Gallery of Australia’s First Nations advisory group, said the technology is undermining the agency of First Nations artists and the authenticity of their work and represents a “a theft” of cultural knowledge.
Despite prime minister Anthony Albanese’s vow to protect Australian creatives from copyright theft, and the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, saying there are “no plans to weaken copyright protections”, AI has already been trained – without compensation –on the works of well known Australian artists including Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave.
But experts are particularly worried about the risks to Indigenous cultural and intellectual property (ICIP) and in a world where AI companies can hoover up anything that may be found online, including songs and paintings that include sacred and cultural knowledge. AI has altered work, removed names and then been sold, an act the peak body for Australian visual artists said was causing “cultural and economic harm”.
Searches on sites including Temu, Shein and Amazon reveal countless works described as Aboriginal paintings, as well as items such as coasters and stubby holders bearing Aboriginal-style designs, mostly without attribution to any artist.
“It’s in the name, it’s artificial,” Scales said.
“I’ve seen some works where I look at it and wonder if they’ve gone through a First Nations community or a person, or if it’s something generic that they’ve whipped up.
“It’s a theft of the agency of the artist. It rips the authenticity out of it, because it’s not been made by anyone who has the connection … the artist’s family lineage is not there, the lived experience is not there.”
Prof Kathy Bowrey, an intellectual property specialist from UNSW Law, said one in five creators already had problems with copyright infringement without AI. But she added the issues became even more complex when the creators were First Nations people, “partly because of lack of control over ownership and respect for Aboriginal culture”.
She gave an example of an organisation paying to use artwork or images of Aboriginal people themselves, then later using AI to “update” or repurpose those images without permission.
“The corporate client can pay you once and then make unauthorised Aboriginal derivative work and use the faces of the artists without consent,” she said.
“Not only do [the artists] not get the repeat business, but when they go to make new work they’re competing against an AI.”
The National Association for the Visual Arts (Nava) said Indigenous data sovereignty “recognises the right of First Nations peoples to exercise authority over their data, cultural material and knowledge”.
In a submission to the joint select committee inquiry on artificial intelligence, Nava pointed to work by the Wuthathi and Meriam lawyer Terri Janke, an international authority on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property, who has “documented AI scraping Indigenous art centre websites, removing artists’ names and altering their work”.
Janke has also warned of the broader risk of AI reproducing cultural knowledge without regard to its accuracy or appropriate use.
“Nava members have also raised concerns about AI-generated ‘Aboriginal-style’ images and designs that imitate community-specific techniques, stories, motifs and mark-making,” the submission said. “These images can be presented and sold as Indigenous or Indigenous-inspired work, spreading misinformation, causing cultural and economic harm and competing with work by First Nations artists.”
Bowrey and a colleague, creative technologies expert associate professor Oliver Bown, have proposed what they call a Copyright Plus framework, which would give creators more power over the use of their work through forcing AI companies to disclose their data sources and giving artists the right to say no to having their work scraped or mimicked. They have also proposed imposing a levy on AI companies to create a scheme to pay creative professionals and establish a cultural fund, and the use of takedown notices for fake content.
Bowrey said they wrote the draft policy based on the parameters of what the government has said so far.
A spokesperson for the attorney general said Australian creatives were “world class” and that the government was committed to supporting them.
“That’s why we’re continuing to consult with creators, media organisations and AI companies on a range of options to ensure any future copyright changes deliver meaningful control and fair compensation,” the spokesperson said.
