Authors Guild Submits Guidance for National AI Action Plan to Protect Writers' Rights
March 19, 2025
Meta’s Massive AI Training Book Heist: What Authors Need to Know
March 20, 2025
Today, The Atlantic published a search tool that allows authors to check if their works are in LibGen, an illegal pirate site AI companies copied for their AI systems. This is a similar tool to the one that journalist Alex Reisner previously made available for the Books3 AI training dataset last year, but this new list has more than 7.5 million books that were copied, at least in part if not in full, by Meta and other AI companies for their AI systems. It is not clear whether Meta downloaded and used every book in LibGen.
Pirate Sites Are Illegal Sources of Books for AI Training
The Authors Guild has collaborated with publishers and the federal government to combat major piracy websites that cost authors millions in lost sales. We took down Z-Library and more than 250 mirror sites, successfully sued Kiss Library, and assisted publishers in actions against LibGen, resulting in blocked U.S. domains and multi-million-dollar fines. These sites remain challenging to permanently eliminate as they operate from Russia or Ukraine—beyond U.S. jurisdiction—and quickly migrate to new domains when blocked.
Meta and other AI companies knew exactly what they were doing but they did it anyway. Why? Because they needed books for their quality writing, style, expression, and long-form narration and would rather steal them than ask and pay for them as they do for all of the other necessary components of their AI, such as electricity and programming.
Class Action Lawsuits Cover All Writers Whose Books Were Used
Legal action is already underway against Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, and other AI companies for using pirated books. If your book was used by Meta, you’re automatically included in the Kadrey v. Meta class action in Northern California without needing to take any immediate action. The court is first deciding whether Meta broke copyright laws, with a decision expected this summer, before officially certifying everyone as a class.
You don’t need to be a named plaintiff to benefit or receive damages if you qualify as part of the class; the Authors Guild is a plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against OpenAI, along with John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, George R.R. Martin, and 13 other authors, but the claims are made on behalf of all US authors whose works have been ingested into GPT. You can read more about that here.
Actions You Can Take Now
There are important actions you can take to defend your rights now:
- Send a formal notice: If your books are in the LibGen dataset, send a letter to Meta and other AI companies stating they do not have the right to use your books. Here is a template you can use.
- Join the Authors Guild: You should join the Guild and support our joint advocacy to ensure that the writing profession remains alive and vibrant in the age of AI. We give authors a voice, and there is power in numbers. We can also help you ensure that your contracts protect you against unwanted AI use of your work. Join today.
- 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. The Authors Guild offers practical resources to help shield your content from AI scrapers.
- Get Human Authored certification: Distinguish your work in an increasingly AI-saturated market with the Authors Guild’s certification program. This visible mark verifies your book was created by a human, not generated by AI. Get certified.
- Stay informed. Sign up for the free Guild biweekly newsletter to keep updated on lawsuits and legislation that could impact you and your rights. The legal landscape is changing rapidly, and we are keeping close watch. Subscribe here.
You are not powerless in this fight. Together, we can have and continue to build our collective power in responding to these blatant violations.