If you're a writer, check to see how much of your work has been used to train AI.
Me? 36 of my works.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/
If you have books on that list, you may be entitled to compensation.
@sjvn I'm very curious how much of the $3K per book reported goes to the lawyers and how much to authors...
@mcdanlj My understanding is that's the authors and publishers' share. That said, typically, class action law firms get 25% to 35% of the settlement amount.
@sjvn Ah, so how about more simply: I'm curious how much will actually go to authors in the end. π
@sjvn How does this make you feel? They stole your work, is this compensation enough?
@sjvn I had my first LLM powered scambot trying to be my friend to promote my book. It had rephrased the blurb to look like it had read it.
@sjvn
Three works for me; but all are multi-author so I wonder how that will workβ¦ π€
@sjvn can authors opt-out and sue separately? I can imagine a deep-pocketed name saying "Nope, try $100k per"
@sjvn Looks like academic papers show up here too? Are authors of academic papers part of the class too? Or is the class limited to book authors?
@CStamp I regard it as a good start. All the AI companies do this, and that was for only one database.
@sjvn So they're going to pay you $108K ($3K x 36) for your books?
@wayubi Oh no. As far as I know, articles aren't covered. Darn it! I'll be pleasantly surprised to see $3,000. Class action lawsuit payouts are often smaller than they initially seem.
@corbet I'm always pleasantly surprised when some of my really obscure works show up.
@stshank From that one database. I know for a fact that thousands of my articles have been gobbled up by the various AI LLMs vacuum cleaners.
@stshank A few months back someone accused me of using AI for one of my Linux articles and cited examples. I double-checked, and they were all examples derived from my own stories.