The Scandal of AI Companies Profiting from Pirated Books
By: William D. Cohan | October 19, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT | Washington Post staff illustration; iStock
Recently, I stumbled upon the searchable database published by Atlantic magazine that contains over 191,000 e-books used to train generative AI systems by companies like Meta and Bloomberg. To my surprise, four of my seven books are in this database known as Books3. What’s alarming is that neither I nor my publishers, Penguin Random House and Macmillan, were consulted or compensated for this use of my intellectual property. This unauthorized scraping of content by Books3 and other pirate collections is unacceptable and needs to be addressed.
I am not alone in this experience. According to the Atlantic’s database, several books by Michael Beschloss and Michael Lewis have also been crawled and ingested into the AI ecosystem without consent. Many other authors share similar stories. Our books are copyrighted material, not free resources for wealthy companies to exploit without permission or compensation. Writing and publishing a book involves significant time, research, and effort, and stealing our intellectual property undermines our livelihoods.
Some authors are beginning to fight back, using the legal system to seek justice. Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, and Christopher Golden have filed a class-action lawsuit against Meta (formerly known as Facebook) in California, demanding an injunction and financial damages for the unauthorized use of their copyrighted material in Meta’s large language models (LLMs). Similar lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI. Michael Chabon has also taken legal action against Meta. While these lawsuits are underway, tech companies behind AI data crawlers continue to profit.
The financial success of these tech giants is evident. Microsoft recently invested $10 billion in OpenAI, increasing its value to nearly $29 billion. It is now valued at $2.3 trillion, a 33% increase this year. OpenAI is also raising funds, potentially tripling its value to $90 billion. Similarly, Google and Meta have introduced their AI products, Bard and LLaMa respectively, resulting in significant stock market valuations that rely on the hard work of content creators.
Scott Galloway, a marketing professor, suggests that authors should focus their attention on demanding fair compensation from Microsoft, Google, and Meta. These companies are heavily reliant on the content they gather without permission or adequate compensation. Authors should unite under a powerful lobbying force, led by figures like billionaire Barry Diller, to fight for their rights and a share of the value created by AI. The AI companies should pay authors for the option to use their books and provide royalties if applicable, just as the film industry does.
Currently, individual authors suing these billion-dollar companies is reminiscent of a David-vs-Goliath scenario. Book publishers, magazine publishers, and newspaper publishers, along with their billionaire owners, must join the fight against the illegal use of intellectual property. Congressional action may even be necessary to compel these trillion-dollar companies to respect writers’ rights. The time for action is now.
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