Ask HN: If I write a book, is there a legal way I can stop LLMs from reading it? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: If I write a book, is there a legal way I can stop LLMs from reading it?

3 pointsmattigames12 comments

A book that is only intended for humans to read, maybe making each buyer to sign something? I'm not sure to be honest. Even if it's just for a limited period of time, 50 years, 20 years.

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No. Even if you tried the AI companies don’t care. You don’t have the resources to enforce it, and slap on the wrist fines don’t bother big tech companies.

Recent court rules have affirmed that it is ok for models to read copyrighted material as part of training, as long as they pay for it.

That being said, some AI companies are offering methods to opt-out

I hope sometime soon the US and other major countries backtracks that decision, and make it fully opt-in not opt-out

What's wrong with an AI reading your book? They have to pay for it, so you will make money

I don't want millions of people being able to one-click generate texts that can emulate my style and thinking without even reading anything of what I have wrote?

> "Hey have to pay for it, so you will make money"

The bubble you people live in is something else.

Have you not learned to write by reading and emulating other authors?

That's how learning works

I personally give my writing away for free and want others to access it directly or through AI.

This is extremely far away from what we meant by the word "learning"* for millions of years, and you know it, stop playing dumb please.

*or equivalent in ancient languages

First, the obvious: legal ways to stop anything have never succeeded in stopping anything.

Second, what would you loose from your book being used to train LLMs and what would you gain from preventing that? Are you afraid of loost sales? Or maybe plagiarism? Those problems have existed for a loooong time, LLMs or not. Or is it that you don't generally like the current AI craze and don't want to fuel it?

include the gamer word on every page and the whole book might get filtered out from the dataset

Don't show it to anybody.

Or show them in place they cannot have any way to copy it onto a digital medium.

Never

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