7. Watching the Well Run Dry: Digital Settler Colonialism*

While the companies behind generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Bard, DALL-E, and Midjourney (Big Data) have amassed a flood of enthusiastic users and advocates, they have also prompted a tidal wave of criticism and legal action. Most critics and litigants focus their arguments on the theft, misappropriation, and blurring of individuals’ content, emphasising potential economic threats and the erasure of creativity. Additionally, critics underscore the implicit bias in such tools, due to the homogenous composition of the companies that build them, and how those biases contribute to the perpetuation of systemic oppression. These critiques, however, often neglect exploring the fundamental drive behind the theft, erasure, and implicit bias that characterises generative AI: digital settler colonialism. Settler colonialism still persists to the present day, one of the most significant manifestations being bottled water (Big Water), and harming minoritised folk around the globe. This chapter draws parallels between Big Water and Big Data to illustrate the digital settler-colonialist framework within which Big Data operates and how that framework, if regulatory measures do not keep pace, will place natural resources and human rights in peril.