In which I discover my book has been scraped by Meta for its AI
My manicurist is showing me the Easter nail art she's been practicing. A cute little bunny stares up at me from her plastic practice nail. She's telling me about another piece of nail art that took her a year to master for Valentine's Day. She's joking about putting the bunny art on her CV.
"You should be proud of it, people can see what's possible," I say. In the back of my mind I'm teetering on the edge of another topic related to nail art and decide to follow up with it. "You know what annoys me when I'm searching for nail art inspiration now? All the AI ones."
Her eyes light up, and we start talking about it. The weird lack of texture on the fingers. The absolutely over the top nail designs that are not possible for her to recreate. She appreciates that I'm able to discern the difference between AI generated photos and not.
I have a background in design and I work in tech, so I feel extra exposed to all things AI. I explain how wild I find it that people online, especially Facebook, so easily think an AI generated photo is real.
"If you just take some extra time to actually look at the image, it doesn't look right."
She nods along with me and shares the same sentiment. Surprised that people can't seem to discern something doesn't look right.
It's kind of like Photoshop with hair color, a decade ago. I'd take a photo into my hair stylist, and she'd point out something about the color being impossible to achieve. I tried to be more discerning of my hair inspiration photos going forward.
Later at dinner, I'm talking with one of my best friends from high school who happens to be in town. Somehow things shift to AI again, and I talk about ChatGPT.
"I think it's weird people use it like a search engine."
"I do that," she says. "But I use critical thinking skills...it even says on the site, results may not be correct. People don't have critical thinking skills anymore."
We discuss the bits we find useful about it, the ultimate lack of critical thinking skills, and my fear of TikTok also being used as a search engine and the way people believe everything on the app is legitimate.
I think about the frustration I'm experiencing with coding and AI being used in tech. My friend is in the medical field. I'm terrified about students using ChatGPT to learn about medicine. That seems much more harmful long term.
We say our goodbyes and I head to my train, which is cancelled, figures, and wait 20 minutes for the next one. I'm scrolling Bluesky when I see an author talking about their books being in the LibGen database that Meta used to scrape and train their AI.
I enter my name into the search field, not actually expecting my name or my book to come up, but my phone connection fails, so I try again, at first thinking my name didn't show up. And then it does. Both an unfinished version of my book and my full book are listed.
I squeeze my phone in fury and can't help but momentarily be consumed by a fury I have not experienced in a very long time.
Mark Zuckerberg's net worth is an estimated $235 billion. This is all I can think about while I ponder the three years it took me to write my book.
I researched, I wrote it, I even designed the original graphics in the book. Something I would not do again if I had the chance. Writing alone is enough work.
I did all this after hours, while working full time. I was wrapping up final edits and designs while I was relocating from Seattle to Berlin. I was exhausted.
No one writes a book for the money. I receive 10% in royalties and I have to hustle if I want my sales to tick up for the month.
If you split out the two advances I received over 3 years, it was the equivalent of being paid $138 a month for writing.
I hustle my butt off to post book deals and sales. Not because I don't think my book is worth the full retail price, but I appreciate that not everyone can afford the full retail price. Book sales tick up when there is sale on the publisher's website. So that's when I typically try to post about it.
You do not get to be a billionaire by being ethical. Clearly, training your company's AI on pirated books is not ethical in the slightest.
This isn't the first time large companies have taken from individuals. Large brands have been stealing from artists for years. The most memorable case stuck in my mind is Modern Dog Design vs Target and Disney. Target sold illustrations created by Modern Dog and in trying to fight Target, ended up having to close.
Modern Dog was a Seattle creative studio, and I was just two years into my design career when this was all unfolding. Since then though, there have been countless indie artists art ripped off by large companies.
Instead of doing the ethical thing and hiring those indie artists, stealing because you know it's too expensive to fight back is disgusting. It's parasitic.
We live in a society that seems to say that art is indeed valuable, because why else would you be stealing it to sell on your merch? But you don't want to pay for it. It's not valuable enough to pay for.
Well that can't be true now can it, if you're slapping it on merchandise to sell.
You would rather crush the artist, whose art you stole, and instead further contribute to an artless world? It doesn't make sense to me.
Whose art are you going to steal when you've crushed all the artists?
Artists deserve to be paid, writers deserve to be paid...ART IS ESSENTIAL. Art is vital to making our human existence beautiful and colorful. Whether through words, painting, pottery, video.
It is essential.
I didn't give Meta permission to train their AI on my book. If they'd like to give me a lump sum to compensate for the use that I didn't authorize, I'd appreciate it. But I won't hold my breath.
I know this sentiment has been shared before: I don't want AI to replace artists and writers, I want it to do my dishes. I want it to clean my house. I want it to give me time back to do the things that bring joy to my soul.
You don't want artists to be paid, but you can't train your AI without artists.
But what else should I expect from a company that could bankrupt an individual trying to fight back.
What else should I expect from a company that profits from a lack of critical thinking skills.
No ethical billionaires indeed.
If you would like to support my work, my publisher is having a sale at the time of writing this piece, and you can purchase Design for Developers, which is written to be evergreen for anyone trying to learn the basics of design for the web.
