Father Benanti made the remarks when asked about Australia's consideration of copyright changes to attract AI training. He compared the risk to Europe's history of taking resources from other countries and profiting from them elsewhere.
"You go, you take resources, and you monetise it outside the place where the resources [were]," he said. He argued that Australian writing could become another resource used by foreign companies, with the money and tax revenue ending up overseas.
"Is it ... a new form of colonialism from foreign power that could ... exploit from the resources and monetise it outside of the place where they are taken?" he asked. "So is this fair? Is this something that will produce real richness or pay back to Australia? I don't know." He said those were questions he would ask before voting on such a change.
Last month, the ABC reported that the Attorney-General's department was quietly consulting on changes that would mean AI companies could train on copyrighted content unless its owner had opted out. In June, Attorney-General Michelle Rowland told 7.30: "This government has repeatedly said that there are no plans to weaken copyright protections when it comes to AI."
Earlier this week, the federal parliament's AI committee took the unusual step of pre-empting its own process to write a letter urging reforms to pave the way for AI training.
Father Benanti praised Australia's efforts to regulate social media and AI when he met Prime Minister Anthony Albanese last week, and told 7.30 other countries should follow Australia's lead in reining in tech companies with policies like the teen social media ban. He described Australia as being at the "foremost frontier" and defended it against aspersions about the effectiveness of laws like the social media minimum age. He said the essential democratic principle was that "no one should be above the law", including overseas social media companies that could rely on protections in their home countries to avoid other governments' rules.