https://www.ingramcontent.com/page/ai-opt-out

When I was on vacation, this link made a bit of a hubbub on book threads, specifically with self-publishing authors concerned that Ingram Content Group was allowing AI companies to purchase books directly so they could feed them into their LLMs. The legal justifications here are so murky, and there are so many cases being settled in courts, there is still a lot of dust to settle here.

But if you are self-publishing with IngramSpark, a subsidiary of Ingram Content Group, you can fill out this form to request that Ingram not be allowed to distribute your books to AI companies. I filled this out for my account. I haven’t heard anything. Didn’t get a confirmation email or any kind of response back. But I did the thing.

Enemies of Peace was part of the big smash-and-grab that Anthropic did when they went to an eBook pirate database and scraped it to train their LLM. My words were used without my permission or knowledge. And because I was still trying to earn royalties at the time, I didn’t register my copyright within the window specified to be part of the class for the class action lawsuit. So other authors got a settlement. I don’t.

So moving forward in my business, if I don’t want companies to be allowed to take things from me, I am doing what I can when I see these opt-outs pop up. I’d love more of them. Companies, stop adding AI features to everything and then making me jump through hoops to opt out. Assume I don’t want it. Assume no one wants it, and then have people positively opt in. That’s the legal requirement for email. We have CAN-SPAM laws; can we have AI laws? Please?

Ok, the form was super easy. If I hear anything back, I’ll let you all know.