Authors v. AI

The class action suit brought by a group of authors against Anthropic is moving ahead, with the AI company—which used pirated books to train its LLMs—facing a potential billion-dollar settlement. Meanwhile, a recent Senate hearing on AI firms’ copyright infringement may have helped assuage publishers’ fears that Big Tech’s violations will go unchecked—but whether it will result in actual legislation remains to be seen. We rounded up some of the biggest fall titles for children and teens in this week’s magazine. In a devastating blow to PBS and NPR, Congress has voted to slash $1.1 billion in public broadcasting funds, reports the New York Times. Publicist Kathleen Schmidt noted on Substack that the publishing industry has had a rather muted response to the cuts—a surprise, Schmidt writes, considering publishers’ reliance on public media for book promotion. This February, HarperCollins will release a picture book by Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani starring his dog Decoy, reports ESPN. In the Bookseller, BookTok influencers sound off on the pitfalls of Character.AI, the AI chatbot that allows users to speak to book characters. Literacy nonprofit 826michigan is relocating its headquarters in order to expand access to its writing and education programs, per Concentrate. And Meghan O’Rourke takes a long look at what makes ChatGPT so seductive—and so corrosive—for writers like herself.