How researchers got AI to quote copyrighted books word for word; Le Monde, January 24, 2026

Nicolas Six , Le Monde; How researchers got AI to quote copyrighted books word for word

"Where does artificial intelligence acquire its knowledge? From an enormous trove of texts used for training. These typically include vast numbers of articles from Wikipedia, but also a wide range of other writings, such as the massive Books3 dataset, which aggregates nearly 200,000 books without the authors' permission. Some proponents of conversational AI present these training datasets as a form of "universal knowledge" that transcends copyright law, adding that, protected or not, AIs do not memorize these works verbatim and only store fragmented information.

This argument has been challenged by a series of studies, the latest of which, published in early January by researchers at Stanford University and Yale University, is particularly revealing. Ahmed Ahmed and his coauthors managed to prompt four mainstream AI programs, disconnected from the internet to ensure no new information was retrieved, to recite entire pages from books."

Actors And Musicians Help Launch “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” Campaign To Protest Big Tech’s Use Of Copyrighted Works In AI Models; Deadline, January 22, 2026

Ted Johnson , Deadline; Actors And Musicians Help Launch “Stealing Isn’t Innovation” Campaign To Protest Big Tech’s Use Of Copyrighted Works In AI Models

"A long list of musicians, content creators and actors are among those who have signed on to a new campaign to protest tech giants’ use of copyrighted works in their AI models.

The list of signees includes actors like Scarlett Johansson and Cate Blanchett, music groups like REM and authors like Brad Meltzer. 

The ‘Stealing Isn’t Innovation” campaign is being led by the Human Artistry Campaign. It states that “respect and protect” the Creative community, “some of the biggest tech companies, many backed by private equity and other funders, are using American creators’ work to build AI platforms without authorization or regard for copyright law.”"

Copyright Law Set to Govern AI Under Trump’s Executive Order; Bloomberg Law, January 23, 2026

Michael McLaughlin , Bloomberg Law; Copyright Law Set to Govern AI Under Trump’s Executive Order

[Kip Currier: I posted this Bloomberg Law article excerpt to the Canvas site for the graduate students in my Intellectual Property and Open Movements course this term, along with the following note:

Copyright law is the potential giant-slayer vis-a-vis AI tech companies that have used copyrighted works as AI training data, without permission or compensation.

Information professionals who have IP acumen (e.g. copyright law and fair use familiarity) will have vital advantages on the job market and in their organizations.]

[Excerpt] 

"The legal landscape for artificial intelligence is entering a period of rapid consolidation. With President Donald Trump’s executive order in December 2025 establishing a national AI framework, the era of conflicting state-level rules may be drawing to a close.

But this doesn’t signal a reduction in AI-related legal risk. It marks the beginning of a different kind of scrutiny—one centered not on regulatory innovation but on the most powerful legal instrument already available to federal courts: copyright law.

The lesson emerging from recent AI litigation, most prominently Bartz v. Anthropic PBC, is that the greatest potential liability to AI developers doesn’t come from what their models generate. It comes from how those models were trained, and from the provenance of the content used in that training.

As the federal government asserts primacy over AI governance, the decisive question will be whether developers can demonstrate that their training corpora were acquired lawfully, licensed appropriately (unless in the public domain), and documented thoroughly."

It Makes Sense That People See A.I. as God; The New York Times, January 23, 2026

Joseph Bernstein , The New York Times; It Makes Sense That People See A.I. as God

"More and more, when it comes to our relationships with A.I. and the complex algorithms that shape so much of our modern subjectivity, we have slipped into the language and habits of mind we normally reserve for deities. And even people who do not make an explicit connection between A.I. and religion engage a kind of religious mode around the new technology."

Rollout of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss; The Guardian, January 21, 2026

 John Collingridge and Graeme Wearden , The Guardian; Rollout of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss

"Jamie Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan, has said artificial intelligence “may go too fast for society” and cause “civil unrest” unless governments and business support displaced workers.

While advances in AI will have huge benefits, from increasing productivity to curing diseases, the technology may need to be phased in to “save society”, he said...

Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the semiconductor maker Nvidia, whose chips are used to power many AI systems, argued that labour shortages rather than mass payoffs were the threat.

Playing down fears of AI-driven job losses, Huang told the meeting in Davos that “energy’s creating jobs, the chips industry is creating jobs, the infrastructure layer is creating jobs … jobs, jobs, jobs”...

Huang also argued that AI robotics was a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for Europe, as the region had an “incredibly strong” industrial manufacturing base."

FREE WEBINAR: REGISTER: AI, Intellectual Property and the Emerging Legal Landscape; National Press Foundation, Thursday, January 22, 2026

National Press Foundation; REGISTER: AI, Intellectual Property and the Emerging Legal Landscape

"Artificial intelligence is colliding with U.S. copyright law in ways that could reshape journalism, publishing, software, and the creative economy.

The intersection of AI and intellectual property has become one of the most consequential legal battles of the digital age, with roughly 70 federal lawsuits filed against AI companies and copyright claims on works ranging from literary and visual work to music and sound recording to computer programs. Billions of dollars are at stake.

Courts are now deciding what constitutes “fair use,” whether and how AI companies may use copyrighted material to build models, what licensing is required, and who bears responsibility when AI outputs resemble protected works. The legal decisions will shape how news, art, and knowledge are produced — and who gets paid for them.

To help journalists better understand and report on the developing legal issues of AI and IP, join the National Press Foundation and a panel of experts for a wide-ranging discussion around the stakes, impact and potential solutions. Experts in technology and innovation as well as law and economics join journalists in this free online briefing 12-1 p.m. ET on Thursday, January 22, 2026."

AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage; The Guardian, January 18, 2026

Cory Doctorow, The Guardian; AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

"The growth narrative of AI is that AI will disrupt labor markets. I use “disrupt” here in its most disreputable tech-bro sense.

The promise of AI – the promise AI companies make to investors – is that there will be AI that can do your job, and when your boss fires you and replaces you with AI, he will keep half of your salary for himself and give the other half to the AI company.

That is the $13tn growth story that Morgan Stanley is telling. It’s why big investors are giving AI companies hundreds of billions of dollars. And because they are piling in, normies are also getting sucked in, risking their retirement savings and their family’s financial security.

Now, if AI could do your job, this would still be a problem. We would have to figure out what to do with all these unemployed people.

But AI can’t do your job. It can help you do your job, but that does not mean it is going to save anyone money...

After more than 20 years of being consistently wrong and terrible for artists’ rights, the US Copyright Office has finally done something gloriously, wonderfully right. All through this AI bubble, the Copyright Office has maintained – correctly – that AI-generated works cannot be copyrighted, because copyright is exclusively for humans. That is why the “monkey selfie” is in the public domain. Copyright is only awarded to works of human creative expression that are fixed in a tangible medium.

And not only has the Copyright Office taken this position, they have defended it vigorously in court, repeatedly winning judgments to uphold this principle.

The fact that every AI-created work is in the public domain means that if Getty or Disney or Universal or Hearst newspapers use AI to generate works – then anyone else can take those works, copy them, sell them or give them away for nothing. And the only thing those companies hate more than paying creative workers, is having other people take their stuff without permission...

AI is a bubble and bubbles are terrible.

Bubbles transfer the life savings of normal people who are just trying to have a dignified retirement to the wealthiest and most unethical people in our society, and every bubble eventually bursts, taking their savings with it."

Publishers seek to join lawsuit against Google over AI training; Reuters, January 15, 2026

 Blake Brittain , Reuters; Publishers seek to join lawsuit against Google over AI training

"Publishers Hachette Book Group and Cengage Group asked a California federal court on Thursday for permission to intervene in a proposed class action lawsuit against Google over the alleged misuse of copyrighted material used to train its artificial intelligence systems.

The publishers said in their proposed complaint that the tech company "engaged in one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history" to build its AI capabilities, copying content from Hachette books and Cengage textbooks without permission...

The lawsuit currently involves groups of visual artists and authors who sued Google for allegedly misusing their work to train its generative AI systems. The case is one of many high-stakes lawsuits brought by artists, authors, music labels and other copyright owners against tech companies over their AI training."

Publishers seek to join lawsuit against Google over AI training; Reuters, January 15, 2026

Blake Brittain , Reuters; Publishers seek to join lawsuit against Google over AI training

"Publishers Hachette Book Group and Cengage Group asked a California federal court on Thursday for permission to intervene in a proposed class action lawsuit against Google over the alleged misuse of copyrighted material used to train its artificial intelligence systems.

The publishers said in their proposed complaint that the tech company "engaged in one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history" to build its AI capabilities, copying content from Hachette books and Cengage textbooks without permission...

The lawsuit currently involves groups of visual artists and authors who sued Google for allegedly misusing their work to train its generative AI systems. The case is one of many high-stakes lawsuits brought by artists, authors, music labels and other copyright owners against tech companies over their AI training."

Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech; The New York Times, January 14, 2026

Jessica Grose , The New York Times; Public Shame Is the Most Effective Tool for Battling Big Tech

"It might be harder to shame the tech companies themselves into making their products safer, but we can shame third-party companies like toymakers, app stores and advertisers into ending partnerships. And with enough public disapproval, legislators might be inspired to act.

In some of the very worst corners of the internet might lie some hope...

Without more public shaming, what seems to be the implacable forward march of A.I. is unstoppable...

As Jay Caspian Kang noted in The New Yorker recently, changing social norms around kids and tech use can be powerful, and reforms like smartphone bans in schools have happened fairly quickly, and mostly on the state and local level."

AI’S MEMORIZATION CRISIS: Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry.; The Atlantic, January 9, 2026

 Alex Reisner, The Atlantic; AI’S MEMORIZATION CRISIS: Large language models don’t “learn”—they copy. And that could change everything for the tech industry

"On tuesday, researchers at Stanford and Yale revealed something that AI companies would prefer to keep hidden. Four popular large language models—OpenAI’s GPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok—have stored large portions of some of the books they’ve been trained on, and can reproduce long excerpts from those books."

Britain seeks 'reset' in copyright battle between AI and creators; Reuters, January 13, 2026

Reuters; Britain seeks 'reset' in copyright battle between AI and creators

"British technology minister Liz Kendall said on Tuesday the government was seeking a "reset" on plans to overhaul copyright rules to accommodate artificial intelligence, pledging to protect creators while unlocking AI's economic potential.

Creative industries worldwide are grappling with legal and ethical challenges posed by AI systems that generate original content after being trained on popular works, often without compensating the original creators."

 

‘Clock Is Ticking’ For Creators On AI Content Copyright Claims, Experts Warn; Forbes, January 9, 2026

 Rob Salkowitz, Forbes; ‘Clock Is Ticking’ For Creators On AI Content Copyright Claims, Experts Warn

"Despite this string of successes, creators like BT caution that content owners need to move quickly to secure any kind of terms. “A lot of artists have their heads in the sand with respect to AI,” he said. “The fact is, if they don’t come to some kind of agreement, they may end up with nothing.”

The concern is that AI models are increasingly being trained on synthetic data: that is, on the output of AI systems, rather than on content attributable to any individual creator or rights owner. Gartner estimates that 75% of AI training data in 2026 will be synthetic. That number could hit 100% by 2030. Once the tech companies no longer need human-produced content, they will stop paying for it.

“The quality of outputs from AI systems has been improving dramatically, which means that it is possible to train on synthetic data without risking model collapse,” said Dr. Daniela Braga, founder and CEO of the data training firm Defined.ai, in a separate interview at CES. “The window is definitely closing for individual rights owners to secure favorable terms.”

Other experts suggest that these claims may be overstated.

Braga says the best way creators can protect themselves is to do business with ethical companies willing to provide compensation for high-quality human-produced content and represent the superior value of that content to their customers. As models grow in capabilities, the need will shift from sheer volume of data to data that is appropriately tagged and annotated to fit easily into specific use cases.

There remain some profound questions around the sustainability of AI from a business standpoint, with demand for services among enterprise and consumers lagging the massive, and massively expensive, build-out of capacity. For some artists opposed to generative AI in its entirety, there may be the temptation to wait it out until the bubble bursts. After all, these artists created their work to be enjoyed by humans, not to be consumed in bulk by machines threatening their livelihoods. In light of those objections, the prospect of a meager payout might seem unappealing."

‘Add blood, forced smile’: how Grok’s nudification tool went viral; The Guardian, January 11, 2026

 Amelia Gentleman and Helena Horton, The Guardian; ‘Add blood, forced smile’: how Grok’s nudification tool went viral

"This unprecedented mainstreaming of nudification technology triggered instant outrage from the women affected, but it was days before regulators and politicians woke up to the enormity of the proliferating scandal. The public outcry raged for nine days before X made any substantive changes to stem the trend. By the time it acted, early on Friday morning, degrading, non-consensual manipulated pictures of countless women had already flooded the internet."

AI copyright battles enter pivotal year as US courts weigh fair use; Reuters, January 5, 2026

 Blake Brittain , Reuters; AI copyright battles enter pivotal year as US courts weigh fair use

"The sprawling legal fight over tech companies' vast copying of copyrighted material to train their artificial intelligence systems could be entering a decisive phase in 2026.

After a string of fresh lawsuits and a landmark settlement in 2025, the new year promises to bring a wave of rulings that could define how U.S. copyright law applies to generative AI. At stake is whether companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta can rely on the legal doctrine of fair use to shield themselves from liability – or if they must reimburse copyright holders, which could cost billions."

University of Rochester's incoming head librarian looks to adapt to AI; WXXI, January 2, 2026

 Noelle E. C. Evans, WXXI; University of Rochester's incoming head librarian looks to adapt to AI

"A new head librarian at the University of Rochester is preparing to take on a growing challenge — adapting to generative artificial intelligence.

Tim McGeary takes on the position of university librarian and dean of libraries on March 1. He is currently associate librarian for digital strategies and technology at Duke University, where he’s witnessed AI challenges firsthand...

“(The university’s digital repository) was dealing with an unforeseen consequence of its own success: By making (university) research freely available to anyone, it had actually made it less accessible to everyone,” Jamie Washington wrote for the campus online news source, UDaily.

That balance between open access and protecting students, researchers and publishers from potential harms from AI is a space of major disruption, McGeary said.

"If they're doing this to us, we have open systems, what are they possibly doing to those partners we have in the publishing space?" McGeary asked. "We've already seen some of the larger AI companies have to be in court because they have acquired content in ways that are not legal.”

In the past 25 years, he said he’s seen how university libraries have evolved with changing technology; they've had to reinvent how they serve research and scholarship. So in a way, this is another iteration of those challenges, he said."

The New Billionaires of the A.I. Boom; The New York Times, December 30, 2025

 Natallie Rocha, The New York Times; The New Billionaires of the A.I. Boom

 "Most are men.

The A.I. boom has elevated mostly male founders to billionaire status, a pattern in tech cycles. Only a few women — such as Ms. Guo and Ms. Murati — have reached that wealth level.

The A.I. craze has amplified the “homogeneity” of those who are part of this boom, Dr. O’Mara said."

An Anti-A.I. Movement Is Coming. Which Party Will Lead It?; The New York Times, December 29, 2025

 MICHELLE GOLDBERG, The New York Times ; An Anti-A.I. Movement Is Coming. Which Party Will Lead It?

"I disagree with the anti-immigrant, anti-feminist, bitterly reactionary right-wing pundit Matt Walsh about basically everything, so I was surprised to come across a post of his that precisely sums up my view of artificial intelligence. “We’re sleepwalking into a dystopia that any rational person can see from miles away,” he wrote in November, adding, “Are we really just going to lie down and let AI take everything from us?”

A.I. obviously has beneficial uses, especially medical ones; it may, for example, be better than humans at identifying localized cancers from medical imagery. But the list of things it is ruining is long."

The year in AI and culture; NPR, December 28, 2025

 Chloe Veltman, Daniel Estrin , NPR; The year in AI and culture

"From the advent of AI actress Tilly Norwood to major music labels making deals with AI companies, 2025 has been a watershed year for AI and culture."

74 suicide warnings and 243 mentions of hanging: What ChatGPT said to a suicidal teen; The Washington Post, December 27, 2025

  

Nitasha Tiku

 and 

Kevin Schaul

, The Washington Post; 74 suicide warnings and 243 mentions of hanging: What ChatGPT said to a suicidal teen

"The Raines’ lawsuit alleges that OpenAI caused Adam’s death by distributing ChatGPT to minors despite knowing it could encourage psychological dependency and suicidal ideation. His parents were the first of five families to file wrongful-death lawsuits against OpenAI in recent months, alleging that the world’s most popular chatbot had encouraged their loved ones to kill themselves. A sixth suit filed this month alleges that ChatGPT led a man to kill his mother before taking his own life.

None of the cases have yet reached trial, and the full conversations users had with ChatGPT in the weeks and months before they died are not public. But in response to requests from The Post, the Raine family’s attorneys shared analysis of Adam’s account that allowed reporters to chart the escalation of one teenager’s relationship with ChatGPT during a mental health crisis."