Meta stole millions of books. Two of them were mine.
what's an author to do? a few ideas (and don't lose heart)
Happy April 1. Sadly, this is not an April Fool’s Joke. This is a true story:
I’m not flattered. I’m really sad.
They stole 72 books from David Sedaris, 200 from Jodi Picoult, Kate Dicamillo. It goes on and on.
On March 20, 2025, journalist Alex Reisner wrote an article for The Atlantic about it: THE UNBELIEVABLE SCALE OF AI’s PIRATED BOOKS PROBLEM. This isn’t a new problem for authors and AI, but it’s still a major, unacceptable problem.
Books are copyrighted. Meaning you can’t steal them, acquire illegally, or pass them off as your own work to make money off of.
This is basic integrity.
Reisner writes:
“When employees at Meta started developing their flagship AI model, Llama 3, they faced a simple ethical question. The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT, and acquiring all of that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead?”
A simple ethical question.
(My eye caught on “high-quality.” That high quality comes from years spent being very writing poor. It’s betting on yourself when the odds are so against you it’s absolutely foolish. It’s writing and editing and querying and being rejected for multiple years and having multiple life crises and editing and editing until eventually there are the high quality and multiple professional editors and copyeditors.)
Obviously, the right thing to do is to NOT STEAL that work.
Court documents released last night show that the senior manager felt it was “really important for [Meta] to get books ASAP,” as “books are actually more important than web data.” Meta employees turned their attention to Library Genesis, or LibGen, one of the largest of the pirated libraries that circulate online. It currently contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. Eventually, the team at Meta got permission from “MZ”—an apparent reference to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg—to download and use the data set.
So that’s what they did. Meta/Facebook STOLE books to train their AI program.
I’m still processing the feelings, though resisting acceptance if that means it’s a shrug of the shoulders and “this is just what the billionaire tech bros do.”
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but still…I am.
They knew it was wrong AND THEY DID IT ANYWAY.
When I think about how wealthy Meta/Zuckerberg is and how little money most authors make and what disregard they showed for a writer’s years of toil and creativity…I have many mean and angry thoughts. Life is just not fair, my friends.
Fair is for pigs and blue ribbons1
Alas. Facebook/Meta could have been so great. But instead they decided to be greedy. And I am so disappointed.
And so dear authors and future authors, here are some action items (so we are not merely acted upon!):
What we can do
Send a formal notice: if your books are in the LibGen data set, send a letter to Meta and other AI companies stating they do not have the right to use your books. The Authors Guild of America gives a template here.
Tell your publisher (and agent if you have one) and protect your works: add a “NO AI TRAINING” notice on the copyright page of your works. For online work, you can update your website’s robots.txt file to block AI bots.
Add your voice to that of over 47,000 creators: Sign the Statement on AI training. The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.2
I have signed my name to the petitions, written to my publisher, and have contacted the law firm llmlitigation.com. They responded immediately and I am thankful! All stolen books will be added to the ongoing class action lawsuit.
As Ann Handley wrote,
Is it too much to ask that AI companies be transparent about data sources and use, obtain permission from creators, and provide fair payment for using their works?
I can't imagine why anyone would disagree.
SEARCH YOUR BOOK HERE and then please spread the word, send the letters, sign the petitions.
Emma Gannon wrote about owning your own work so well (I read this right after I finished this draft; it felt more than serendipitous) - thank you
. Owning my work is one of many reasons I like . And just remember:It’s never been more important to think about ownership of your art. Authors spend so much time working on their projects. I recently read about Martha Beck’s writing process—she takes six-mile walks, listens to audiobooks at 2x speed, writes on Post-its notes for a year, and then lies on the floor with huge sheets of paper to bring it all together, and then types it all up before sending a draft to her editor. The manual work authors do with their juicy little brains is intense. I’m sure AI can help with some stuff, but honestly, the reason you enjoyed the book you just read is because someone, a human, spent years churning it over inside their heart and mind, and stuck with it throughout so many ups and downs, just hoping it might change someone’s day.3
Don’t lose heart. Most people are good (I must believe this, I must believe, I must..)
Stay strong, have integrity 😊 (and protect your work!!!)
Love, Amy
Baby Bump Painting of the Week: the grapefruit!
I cleaned off my desk and painted! It was truly delightful and got my mind off the stealing. I used acrylic paint, which is so different than watercolor, but so enjoyable.
Painting my daughter’s baby bump “fruits” week by week is helping me pay attention to the miracle of life, and Attention is the beginning of devotion…
And lastly, want to do some Zoom writing sessions?
It works like this: You join a zoom session and write! That’s it. It’s shockingly productive. You can do whatever creative thing you’d like - I’ve been to “creative” hours where most people write, some people paint, some knit…whatever! But it’s a quiet work session and you’ll get your next chapter written. Let me know what works.
The Unforgettable Guinevere St. Clair is part-mystery, part understanding of the human heart 💖
Ten Thousand Tries is Golden’s quest to save his dad and the soccer team ⚽
The McNifficents is one summer with six rambunctious kids and their miniature-schnauzer nanny 🐕 New Hampshire’s 2024 Great Reads for Kids selection!
not helpful, Amy. but sadly, true.
This is an exact copy/paste paragraph from societyofauthors.org - thank you for this info (this is a UK site)
I added the bold print
I’m so sorry. And as an author in the query trenches, doing all the work and yet to see much come of it, I agree with you 100%. Thank you for taking the time to collect these resources and offer action!
Ugh the last time I looked there was only one. Now four came up. Definitely sucks.. Thanks for this info, Amy.