In the eyes of big AI companies such as OpenAI, the troves of data on the internet are highly valuable. They scrape photos, videos, books, blog posts, albums, painting, photographs and much more to train their products such as ChatGPT – usually without any compensation to or consent from the creators.

In fact, OpenAI and Google are arguing that a part of American copyright law, known as the “fair use doctrine”, legitimises this data theft. Ironically, OpenAI has also accused other AI giants of data scraping “its” intellectual property.

First Nations communities around the world are looking at these scenes with knowing familiarity. Long before the advent of AI, peoples, the land, and their knowledges were treated in a similar way – exploited by colonial powers for their own benefit.

What’s happening with AI is a kind of “digital colonialism”, in which powerful (mostly Western) tech giants are using algorithms, data and digital technologies to exert power over others, and take data without consent. But resistance is possible – and the long history of First Nations resistance demonstrates how people might go about it.

Terra nullius is a Latin term that translates to “no........

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