(Maclean’s) – The world’s most powerful companies used my books, and millions more, without permission to train their AI models. I’m suing to stop them.

When I learned that my copyrighted work had helped fuel this explosion, I thought of Sex Pistols singer Johnny Rotten’s final words on stage, before his band broke up: “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” I’d been wronged in ways both personal and universal. I thought about the great care that writers take with others’ intellectual property. If I quote more than a few lines from someone else’s work, I have to seek permission. If I even borrow too heavily from another writer’s ideas, I commit plagiarism. Yet the tech companies consumed copyrighted works with such apparent gusto that Wired magazine described it as “slurping.”

Because they have eaten so many fruits of the human mind, these models “know” far more than any single person—in this sense, they are superhuman. (Read More)