Penguin Random House (PRH), the world's largest trade publisher, has taken a significant step to protect its authors' intellectual property from unauthorised use in artificial intelligence (AI) training, The Bookseller reports exclusively.
The publishing giant has amended its copyright wording across all imprints globally to explicitly prohibit the use of its books for AI training purposes. The new statement, to be included in all new titles and reprinted backlist titles, 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 move comes amid growing concerns in the publishing industry about the use of copyrighted material to train large language models (LLMs) and other AI tools. Several copyright infringement cases are currently underway in the US, and reports suggest that pirated books have already been used by tech companies for AI training.
Industry bodies have welcomed PRH's initiative. The full copyright statement also expressly reserves its works from the text and data mining exception.The Bookseller reported that while some publishers like Pan Macmillan, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster declined to comment on their plans, Faber has recently adopted an "AI policy" prohibiting freelancers from using authors' books in AI programmes for editing or other purposes.