'Unlicensed, unrestricted AI training could destroy the ecosystem for books' quote of the day by the Authors Guild on the sourcing of training data

Date:
Mon, 24 Aug 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Description:
Many of today's widely used AI systems have been trained on material sourced from books

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter To achieve any level of competency, large language models (LLMs) need ample data for sufficient training. AI companies have looked to various sources to mine this information, including content publicly available on the internet, synthetic data generated from other AI models, and printed literature. "Unlicensed, unrestricted AI training could destroy the ecosystem for books in the long run, and copyright exceptions do not extend to undermining the very purpose
of copyright law." The Authors Guild, November 2025 Reading difficulties Prompted by news that AI companies were allegedly using books from pirate ebook sites to build their LLMs, writers, authors, and publishers publicly called out this deeply worrying process. Quote of the day This article is
part of TechRadar Pro's QOTD project to provide an insight into the minds of the brightest and most recognized figures in the technology industry today
and in years gone by. Read the full series here . The professional organization known as the Authors Guild responded to various stories about AI companies scanning books to train their AI models (both illegally and
legally) with incredibly comprehensive guidelines on AI licensing . Latest Videos From TechRadar Watch full video here:

This document covered the various manifestations of the use of published
works by AI companies, including its legal perspective on the legitimacy of using such works. It also highlighted that the continued data harvesting processes would risk destroying the ecosystem for books that currently
exists. Book buying The use of books by AI companies is an ongoing concern. But in recent months the focus has pivoted to those that buy, scan and destroy books on an industrial scale. You may like AI firms are destroying ultra-rare books so nobody else can read them Anthropic's allegation that Alibaba copied Claude has huge implications The AI data problem nobody talks about: Why more information isn't making better decisions

For example, court documents revealed the existence of ' Project Panama ' inside Anthropic. This is a scheme in which the company aims to
"destructively scan all the books in the world" and used a codename because "we dont want it to be known that we are working on this.".

To train Claude, Anthropic had to procure a large and high-quality dataset,
so it set out to purchase books on an industrial scale because of the relatively high-quality nature of the writing compared with, say, writing found online. Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners
or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms &
Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.



======================================================================
Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/unlicensed-unrestricted-ai-training-could-destro y-the-ecosystem-for-books-quote-of-the-day-by-the-authors-guild-on-the-sourcin g-of-training-data


--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 (Linux/64)
* Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100)