Leading Australian authors and publishing industry representatives urged the federal parliamentary inquiry into artificial intelligence on Wednesday to maintain strong copyright protections amid concerns about AI companies mining creative works without permission.

Bestselling author Anna Funder, winner of the Miles Franklin Award, joined Booker Prize-shortlisted Charlotte Wood and international bestselling writer Markus Zusak in testifying before the joint committee. All three said their books have been "scraped" by offshore AI firms to train generative models, often without their consent or compensation.

Funder, author of *Stasiland* and *All That I Am*, argued that protecting copyrighted material is critical not only for creators' fairness but also for preserving democratic values. She warned against treating Australia as a “terra nullius” for Silicon Valley’s technology companies, which she said prioritize accumulating enormous profits at the expense of social responsibility.

Wood, whose novel *Stone Yard Devotional* was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, described the use of her work by AI companies as “the greatest wage theft in history.” She stressed that her books are the product of extensive creativity, deep observation, education, and human connection, all of which she said are devalued when her words are mined without remuneration. She said all 10 of her books have been harvested by AI firms, which rely on the "complexity and insight" of literary works to train what she described as "sloppy sweeping robots."

Zusak, known for *The Book Thief*, highlighted the broader implications for Australia's creative industries, noting the erosion of protections through AI-enabled “theft” risks undermining future generations of writers and their ability to benefit from their work. His widely translated novel, he said, has been widely pirated and used for AI training.

The hearing, chaired by federal MP Jo Briskey, also featured testimony from Lucy Hayward, CEO of the Australian Society of Authors, and executives from major publishing organizations including Hachette Australia and the Australian Publishers Association. Hayward accused foreign AI companies of engaging in what they themselves have described as the “largest theft of labour in history” by using copyrighted content—much of it obtained from pirate websites—to train commercial AI services without paying creators. She said these companies face more than 150 lawsuits in the United States alone and are lobbying governments worldwide to weaken copyright laws.

Under current Australian law, an opt-in model requires explicit permission from creators before AI training can include their work, while an opt-out model assumes consent unless creators remove content. Anthropic, an AI firm, has reportedly recommended adopting the opt-out approach.

In contrast, HarperCollins recently piloted an opt-in licensing scheme involving about 200 Australian authors, paying $2,500 per book for backlist titles used in training Microsoft’s AI model. The publisher negotiated terms restricting how much text the AI could reproduce.

The book industry in Australia, valued around $4 billion and supporting some 30,000 jobs with over 230 million sales and library loans annually, is watching the outcome of the inquiry closely as it grapples with the challenges posed by AI technologies to copyright and authorship.