The largest of the Big Five publishing companies, Penguin Random House, (‘PRH’) has become one of the first of its kind to amend its copyright wording to protect their authors’ intellectual property rights from being used to train AI systems.
The new statement reads:
‘No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems’
This will be printed on all new books, as well as any re-printed versions of previously existing books. This decision has likely been made after an influx in copyright infringement cases have taken place across the globe in relation to elements of books which have been used to train AI systems.
None of the other Big Five (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster) have taken this action yet.
Barbara Hayes, CEO of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society has commented on PRH’s change saying: ‘It is encouraging to see major publishers like PRH adopt new wording in their printed materials that reaffirms the principle of copyright and explicitly forbids technology companies from using copyrighted works to train their AI models. We hope more publishers follow PRH’s lead and that those companies developing such models take urgent notice.’
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