Meta Must Truly Love My Work!

 

The entitlement that rich people enjoy is interesting. Want something? Just take it! Mark Zuckerberg stole my novel, The Apple, to train his AI model.   

Of course, he didn't just steal my book, but probably millions of others, or whatever 82 terabytes of data equals. At least he wasn't a snob about it ~ The Apple has sold three copies since it was published in 2021. Maybe I should be happy that it's useful to someone. But, you know, I'm not. Here I am, a penniless writer, sticking a novel up on Amazon for the outrageous price of $2.99, but buying it, for Mark, was just a bridge too far.

(If you want to discover whether Mark stole your work, too, click here. You can also send him a letter using this template, courtesy of The Authors Guild.) 

The Apple was my third novel, just when I was learning how to write, and it took me approximately six or seven more books to actually become a good writer. That's not to say The Apple is bad. It's not, and apparently it's good enough for Meta! Regardless, I spent over a year writing it, interrupted by COVID, during which time I had to swap out my personal computer for a company-supplied one in order to work from home, and my manuscript wasn't stored on the cloud. And whether it won Novel of the Year or not, I agonized over my plot and edited the hell out of the first draft. But, hey! "Does that really matter?" asks Mark.

Curious as to what use my (or anyone's) work would be in training AI, I, of course, asked AI (kidding, but I did some research). I especially like this: "By analyzing the structure, grammar, vocabulary, and style of the text in books, AI can learn to understand and generate human-like text." Granted, I've not gotten a lot of reviews for my books, but at least no one has mentioned that my words were "human-like". I suppose most people take something like that for granted. They shouldn't. AI is already churning out human-like books, and we authors are unwittingly helping it kill off our careers.

"AI can be used to assist authors in writing, editing, and even generating entire books or parts of books." I read an article once in which an author was defending the use of AI in writing. She mentioned that AI helped her "brainstorm" her next scene, and even outlined the plot for her. Weird coincidence, but my dishwasher helped me wash my dinner dishes yesterday. It was arduous, but I really like the finished product. And talk about a time saver!

You can like my books or loathe them (or more commonly, ignore them), but they're not human-like. They're human. Know who helped me brainstorm? Me. And no, Mark, you shouldn't get to steal my brain just because you can.