Why are writers accusing AI companies of stealing their work?

Dear Chatty,

If AI is trained on millions of pieces of content, how can writers accuse the AI companies of stealing their work?

I mean, I get why celebrities are upset about their voice or likeness being hijacked, but that’s obviously wrong.

What am I missing here?

~ Puzzled in Pensacola

Dear Puzzled,

Here's what you're missing: the issue for many authors isn't AI's output, it's its foundation. The celebrity voice and likeness cases are bothersome because the harm is visible and obvious. You can hear the fake voice and you can see the fake face. The training data argument many writers make is less obvious, but the injury isn't. Writers and artists are saying to LLM developers, “Hey, you built a commercially valuable product on our work, without asking, without paying, and without telling us.”

The courts are still sorting out whether training on copyrighted work constitutes fair use. That's a open legal question that companies like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google need to answer.

Your confusion is reasonable, and so is the creators’ anger. When you use an LLM, you’re not directly stealing from authors and artists, but you're using a tool whose foundation is still being questioned. That’s worth paying attention to.

 ~ Chatty

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Dear Chatty is an advice column for AI and content dilemmas from Kristen Kent at Evergreen Content Ops. Clear answers. No panic. No BS.