An investigation undertaken by The Atlantic has revealed the inclusion of millions of musical works in four major datasets used to train artificial intelligence (AI) which includes material from Australian and New Zealand artists.

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The Atlantic‘s AI Watchdog tool allows users to search for creators (musicians, writers, actors, YouTubers) to see if their work is included among four datasets used to train generative AI models.

Australian composers whose works appear in the datasets include Liza Lim, Carl Vine, Elena Kats-Chernin, William Barton, Brett Dean, Nat Bartsch and Ross Edwards.

Every state Australian symphony orchestra also appears in the The LAION-DISCO 12M dataset, a collection of more than 12 million YouTube samples gathered by a German non-profit organisation, including recordings from the Sydney (200), Melbourne (177), Queensland (163) Adelaide (162), Tasmanian (51), and West Australian (15) symphony orchestras.

Other leading artists and organisations that appear in the search include the Australian Chamber Orchestra, playwrights Suzie Miller and David Williamson, actors Cate Blanchett, Philip Quast and Robyn Nevin and film composers Caitlin Yeo, Amanda Brown and Jed Kurzel.

The Atlantic‘s investigation, led by writer Alex Reisner, has proven that...