Writers, publishers Singapore reject government plan to train AI on their work

Singaporean writers and publishers are pushing back against a government plan to use their works to train the National Multimodal LLM Programme (NMLP), a large language model. The S$70 million ($52 million) project, launched last December, is touted as Southeast Asia's first regional LLM, and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) sent a survey to local writers in a late-March email that gave 10 days to respond. Author Gwee Li Sui declined to let the model train on his works, citing unclear protections against use beyond the stated public service and little detail on compensation or copyright. Dave Chua said yes, while Singapore Unbound said it did not receive the survey.