Greetings from a scorching hot Cirencester.
Before we get started, there’s a new episode of The Sunset Chronicles for your reading pleasure, available now on ebook and Kindle Unlimited!
This marks a pretty significant milestone for The Sunset Chronicles, as it’s halfway through the fourth season of seven, which, if my maths is correct, means we’re exactly halfway through the complete saga.
Now, I’ve been away for a little while a little longer than I expected to be, and it’s because, like the proverbial wolf, I have been somewhat wounded, and I wanted to talk about it.
I’ve made my feelings about the recent AI boom pretty clear, in this newsletter and elsewhere. Not only does it require precious natural resources to drive its insatiable need for power and water, but it’s also yet to deliver anything other than cheap party tricks. Oh, and did I mention that every major AI is suspected of major IP theft to train on?
Well, a few weeks ago, that was confirmed, when it was revealed that Meta had trained its shiny new AI not just on the collected data that we’ve all foolishly been handing them over the last two decades, but on a huge trove of pirated ebooks. As in, they purposefully downloaded a massive tranche of books from a clearly illigal source, and fed them into their slop machine.
As every author did when they saw the reporting in The Atlantic, I checked to see if that included mine, assuming very much that it wouldn’t. Except…
I wasn’t expecting this to impact me as much as it did, but now, a few weeks later, I can look back and see that this really did a number on me. Now, I’m not a big author. Even the Blood on the Motorway trilogy, by far my most successful books, have never really made me anything more than a bit of pocket money, and I’m fine with that. I gave up on the idea of making a living from writing a good while back. But to find out that one of the richest, most profitable companies on the planet had stolen my work and used it to feed something to which I’m so personally opposed…. well, shit. It messed me up a bit.
Now, you’ll have likely seen the stories around this. Huge authors, getting together class actions, pushing back, petitioning Meta. But I ain’t got the juice for that. I can’t get Zuck’s attention, and nor would I want it. I have, after all, read The Midwich Cuckoos, so I know how that would go.
But I could ask Meta AI what it thought of it…
I started by trying to play a trick on it, one I knew wouldn’t work.
Now, it was very nice of it to say such lovely things about the books, but that wasn’t what I was getting at…
The fourth point here absolutely enraged me. The gall of it!
Oooh, there are ongoing discussions about fair compensation, are there? It’s funny, I don’t recall them in the leadup to them stealing my books. But that’s not the thing that really angered me the most. To hear the old ‘for exposure’ trope being beddled by a jumped up Clippy made me so angry. I’m still angry.
I’m so angry, in fact, that I deleted my facebook and my instagram. I’d get rid of whatsapp, too, if it weren’t the only way to keep in touch with some people. I will have lost friends by deleting facebook and insta, but I just couldn’t countenance staying on them after this.
I know that there’s a lot going on in the world right now (and my absolute solidarity to any trans or non-binary brothers/sisters/other right now, who are going through state-sponsored cruelty on an unfathomable level on both sides of the Atlantic) but this genuinely stopped me from writing for the best part of a month. I couldn’t face it, because what’s the point? Not only is it increasingly difficult to stand out in a marketplace filled with slop generated by people who refuse to learn the craft, but even if you do, this is the reward you can expect.
I’m back to it now, working on the seventh and final season of The Sunset Chronicles, but I wanted to share just how hurtful this kind of thing can be, not just to the big flashy names who get interviewed by the Atlantic or the Guardian when things like this happen.
So, if you fancy picking up a book or two, now would be a pretty good time to do so…
Until next time, happy reading.
NOT YOU, META.
Paul
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