Penguin Random House amends its copyright rules to protect authors from AI

The new warning prohibits AI companies from training on the publisher’s books.

Artificial intelligence makers have faced a mountain of criticism for borrowing from the work of others to train its models. Now the world’s largest publishing house is taking steps to ensure its authors don’t have their work plagiarized in the name of progress.

The Bookseller reports that Penguin Random House Publishing changed the copyright page at the front of its books to address using any of its titles as a source for AI training. Now the wording states: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.”

The new wording also protects against data absorption by noting the publisher “expressly reserves [the titles] from the text and data mining exception.” This part of the amended text comes from a recent European Parliament directive regarding text and data mining exceptions and ownership.

Penguin Random House is the latest publishing company to take action against encroaching AI models. Earlier this week, The New York Timesissued a cease and desist letter to the AI startup Perplexity to spot using its articles and stories to help its AI model create answers for users.