In one of those “I thought everyone knew that already” stories, this week the book world has been up in arms at revelations that the AI industry is training its large language models, where digital titles aren’t available, on physical books. Firms are buying copies of print books and then destroying them as they scan them into their computers. Some of the titles ending up subjected to this fate are exceedingly rare and have been out of print for decades.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The aim, of course, is to expand the repertoire of large language models with high-quality prose and poetry not available in digital format. The reaction has been as you would expect, spurred by a piece in the online magazine 404 (the article is behind a paywall, but there’s a 50-plus-minute YouTube feature from 404 that isn’t) in which the authors attached an AirTag to a book sold to a suspect buyer, only to track what happened and find out it ended up at a location where Amazon trains AI.
This has created concerns on many axes in addition to the usual copyright issues, such as worry over the destruction of valuable cultural heritage.
Textbook Authors Sue OpenAI
Also in AI news is a new lawsuit that caught my eye as someone who, just at the wrong moment, it seems, recently wrote three nonfiction books that border on the textbook genre. Publishers and authors are coming together in a potential class action to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement in relation to training AI models on textbooks.
The case attempts to make a clear distinction between these titles and fiction books, where fair use has been, if not established, then at least supported by a couple of legal rulings. The argument is that there is a genuine potential for market damage where those who would otherwise purchase textbooks are able to go to AI for the same material laid out in the same way (a careful case has to be made here, as there is no copyright in ideas, only the presentation of those ideas).
They also cite an additional market pressure. Because those who buy the titles are under budgetary pressures, be they students or educational providers, there are real market pressures not to buy gold-standard textbooks when “good enough” can be had for a fraction of the cost or no cost.
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