Penguin Random House Takes Strong Stance Against AI — No Mistaking This Updated Copyright Language

Photo Credit: Penguin Random House (UK CEO Tom Weldon)

Penguin Random House has updated its wording on its copyright pages to better protect its authors’ intellectual property from AI uses. The language specifically addresses large language models (LLMs) and other artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

A report from The Bookseller details these changes across all of its imprints globally confirming these new guidelines will appear “in imprint pages across our markets.” The new wording from these documents states, “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.”

These new notices will be included in all new titles and any back-listed titles that are reprinted. The statement “expressly reserves [the titles] from the text and data mining exception,” in accordance with a European Parliament directive. The Bookseller reports that PRH UK CEO Tom Weldon said in a memo to staff in August 2024 that the trade publisher would “vigorously defend the intellectual property that belongs to our authors and artists.”

“It is encouraging to see major publishers like PRH adopt new wording in their printed materials that reaffirms the principle of copyright and explicitly forbids technology companies from using copyrighted works to train their models,” says Barbara Hayes, CEO of The Authors’ Licensing & Collecting Society. “We hope more publishers follow [PRH’s] lead and that those companies developing such models take urgent notice.”

Several publishers have written cease and desist letters to some of the larger LLM platforms, taking practical steps to prevent their copyrighted works from being scraped or use for LLM training. When other major publishers were asked about updating their copyright wording, Pan Macmillan, Hachette, and Simon & Schuster all declined to comment.

Faber could not be reached for a comment. Though Faber recently adopted an ‘AI Policy’ that would prohibit freelancers working with its authors’ books from copying any of the information into an AI program “for the purposes of editing, checking, extraction, or any other purpose.”