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   Meta stole my book to train its AI  but theres a bigger problem   
      
   Date:   
   Thu, 01 May 2025 11:43:42 +0000   
      
   Description:   
   Tech companies are using books to feed AI without consent. But the problem   
   goes beyond copyright  its about creativity, value, and ownership.   
      
   FULL STORY   
   ======================================================================   
      
   A shadow library might sound like something from a fantasy novel  but its   
   real, and far more troubling.    
      
   Its an online archive of pirated books, academic papers, and other peoples   
   work, taken without permission. These libraries have always been   
   controversial. But in the AI world, theyre an open secret  rich sources of   
   high-quality writing used to train large language models.    
      
   The books in them are goldmines because they're long-form, emotional, diverse   
   and generally well-written. Using them to train AI is a shortcut to teaching   
   these tools how humans think, feel, and express themselves. But licensing    
   them properly would be expensive and messy. So tech companies just didnt   
   bother.    
      
   This quiet exploitation exploded into public view in March 2025 when The   
   Atlantic released a tool that lets anyone search for their books in LibGen   
   (Library Genesis), one of the biggest shadow libraries.    
      
   And there it was, my book Screen Time , along with millions of others.    
      
   It's been revealed in legal documents that Meta, the parent company of   
   Facebook and Instagram, used LibGen to train its large language models,   
   including LLaMA 3. Not every title was necessarily used, but the possibility   
   alone is enough to leave authors reeling.    
      
   As a tech journalist, Ive always tried to stay level-headed about AI  curious   
   but critical. But when its your book thats been stolen to train AI, it hits   
   differently. You think about the hours, the edits, the emotion. The despair   
   and euphoria of creating something from nothing.    
      
   It feels as if all of that has been swallowed whole by a system that mimics   
   creativity while erasing the creator. The outrage from authors is real  the   
   lack of consent, the lack of compensation. But what haunts me is something   
   deeper, a grief for creativity itself, and the sense it's slipping away.   
      
   Fair use or foul play?   
      
   Meta has been under legal scrutiny about this for some time. In 2023, authors   
   including Richard Kadrey, Sarah Silverman, Andrew Sean Greer, and Junot Daz   
   took legal action against the company , alleging it used their books without   
   consent to train its large language models.    
      
   Meta's defence has been that training its AI models on copyrighted material   
   constitutes what's known as fair use. One of the company's arguments is that   
   the process is transformative, as the AI doesn't reproduce the original works   
   but instead learns patterns from them to generate new content.    
      
   Laws in the UK and US differ. In the UK, this is generally considered    
   unlawful unless it falls under specific exceptions like "fair dealing," which   
   has a narrower scope than the US's "fair use." In the US, the legality will   
   hinge on how "fair use" is interpreted, which is currently being tested in   
   ongoing legal disputes. The outcomes will likely set significant precedents   
   for future AI copyright law.    
      
   Meta and other AI advocates insist these systems will bring us enormous   
   benefits. Can't the means justify the ends? Personally, I can appreciate that   
   argument. But let's not kid ourselves  Meta's primary motivation is profit.   
   The company is leveraging creative works as raw material to scale its AI   
   capabilities.    
      
   Writer and author Lauren Bravo, whose books Probably Nothing , Preloved and   
   What Would the Spice Girls Do? were scraped into LibGen, told me: I feel   
   furious about my books being on there, for myriad reasons. It's hard enough    
   to make a decent living from writing books these days  the average author's   
   income is 7k!  so to know that a company worth over a trillion dollars felt    
   it was reasonable to use our work without throwing us a few quid is so   
   enraging there aren't even words for it.    
      
   Historian, broadcaster and author Dr Fern Riddell, whose books Death in Ten   
   Minutes , Sex: Lessons From History and The Victorian Guide to Sex were also   
   in the LibGen database, said: Its absolutely devastating to see yours  and   
   many others  lifes work stolen by a billion-dollar company. This is not the   
   proliferation of ideas. Its straightforward theft to make Meta money. The   
   scale of it is almost incomprehensible  all my books have been stolen, along   
   with my right to protect my work.    
      
   Like Bravo and Riddell, other authors are understandably angry and confused   
   what this means for the future. The Society of Authors and several other   
   organizations are considering adding to the mounting legal action against   
   Meta. Maybe change will come  new licensing rules, more transparency, opt-in   
   models. But it feels too little, too late.    
      
   Writing a book is a long and deeply personal process for any author. But   
   because mine talks about losing both my parents at a young age  from coping   
   with grief as a teenager to caring for my mum through cancer  it feels extra   
   personal, writer and corporate content consultant Rochelle Bugg tells me,   
   whose book Handle With Care is also in the dataset. I poured my heart and    
   soul into my book, so the fact it has been taken, without my knowledge or   
   consent, and used to train AI models that will generate profit for someone   
   else seems totally unjust and completely indefensible.    
      
   There's something uniquely painful about deeply personal work being scraped   
   and repurposed, especially without permission.   
      
   The art of being human    
      
   These latest incidents have raised all sorts of questions not just about   
   copyright, but about creativity  and how little we seem to value it.    
      
   "I fear it's symptomatic of something much larger that's been going on for   
   decades," Lauren Bravo tells me. "The way creative work has been dramatically   
   devalued by the internet."    
      
   "We've all participated in it," she adds. "In some ways, the democratization   
   of content has been brilliant. But the sinister flipside is that we now    
   expect to consume creative work for free  writing, music, art, even porn."    
      
   Generative AI tools take that mindset and dial it up to eleven. Why pay for   
   anything when with a quick prompt you can make it instantly?    
      
   Take the viral AI-generated Studio Ghibli trend . It looks charming until you   
   remember that Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki has publicly condemned it. Yes,    
   AI can gobble up his art and copy its style anyway. But is that kind of   
   mimicry creativity? Is it still art if it's made without permission, or   
   without the human experience that shaped it?    
      
   Some of us obsess over these questions. But honestly? It's starting to look   
   like few others care. Tech companies mine data. Users get the dopamine hit of   
   jumping on a new trend. Everyone keeps scrolling.   
      
   Author Philip Ellis, whose books We Could Be Heroes and Love & Other Scams   
   were scraped into LibGen, told me: "I see artists online trying to educate   
   their followers about AI's environmental impact. But as the action figure   
   trend has shown, your average person is still ignorant  maybe wilfully  of    
   how bad generative AI is proving to be. Not just for the climate, but for   
   culture."    
      
   Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (the company behind ChatGPT), takes an   
   unsurprisingly optimistic view. In a recent TED 2025 interview, he claimed   
   generative AI can democratize creativity.    
      
   He acknowledges the ethical complexities  copying styles, lack of consent     
   and has floated ideas like opt-in revenue sharing. But even he admits that   
   attribution, consent, and fair pay are still "big questions."    
      
   OpenAI blocks users from mimicking living artists directly, but broader genre   
   imitation is still allowed. Altman insists that every leap in creative tech   
   has led to "better output." But who decides what's "better"? And who    
   benefits?    
      
   The danger next is that young creators might see this landscape and wonder if   
   creating is still worth it.    
      
   "I'm scared that we'll lose a future generation of painters, authors,   
   musicians," Ellis tells me. "That they won't feel the thrill of discovery.    
   The joy of putting hours into a creative pursuit for its own sake. Because   
   companies like Meta have told them a machine can do the hard part  as if the   
   hard part isn't the whole point."    
      
   What we lose when we turn to AI to "create" for us isnt just jobs or   
   royalties. We also lose the messy, magical process that gives art its    
   meaning. Creators arent prompt-fed machines. They're emotional, chaotic and   
   alive. Every poem, novel, song or sketch is shaped by memory, trauma,    
   boredom, desire. Thats what we connect to isn't it? Not polish, but meaning   
   and soul.    
      
   As Ellis told me: "Even if I'm never published again, I'll still carry on   
   writing. Because the act itself  of crafting characters and worlds that seem   
   to exist almost independently of me  is what makes me happy."    
      
   AI can certainly produce something that resembles art. Sometimes it's clever.   
   Sometimes it's even beautiful. But the AI tool you use doesnt feel or care or   
   know why it exists. Instead, we know it works by interpreting a prompt then   
   borrowing, blending, remixing and regurgitating. So we have to ask whether   
   what AI creates is still creativity in the absence of a human creator?    
      
   Its the kind of question that keeps me up at night. And maybe ultimately it    
   no longer matters. Maybe the very idea of creativity is being rewritten. Tech   
   giants certainly promise us bold new forms of expression through AI. And many   
   people are clearly excited by that prospect. But lets at least be honest,   
   these systems werent built to nurture our creativity. They were built to   
   monetize it.    
      
   This isnt just about my book, or even the 7.5 million others in LibGen. Its   
   about what we choose to value, like art, culture and the wild and weird   
   richness of human experience. Because the truth is, we're not just training   
   machines. Were training ourselves to accept a world where our most meaningful   
   expressions become raw material for someone elses profit. And if were not   
   careful, well forget what it ever felt like to make something real.   
      
   ======================================================================   
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.techradar.com/computing/artificial-intelligence/meta-stole-my-book   
   -to-train-its-ai-but-theres-a-bigger-problem   
      
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