AI stole my books - and I won't get a cent from the lawsuit
FK AI 4Eva honestly
Once upon a time, a fantastic woman rang me to say she was from Penguin Random House and she wanted me to write a book. I was at my public sector job, exhausted, with two kids under two.
I thought it was a prank call.
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Why would anyone want to publish a bogan mum literally ranting in the dark? This woman took a punt on me and launched my career as an author and writer.
Rants in the Dark went on to be a best-seller.
I was suddenly not anonymous any more. It was terrifying and exciting, and it changed my life. I made money, but not very much. Certainly not enough to quit my job. And now, I was no longer anonymous. I was being doxxed online. Photos of me were shared all over X with comments about how I was a fat, ugly pig.
I don't at all regret publishing that book - It was a surreal and tremendous experience. But it brought me exposure that wasn't necessarily wanted, without the funds to compensate for that exposure.
I followed up Rants in the Dark with Is It Bedtime Yet? because platforming other writers who had not been published because of misogynist attitudes about 'parenting writing' was important to me.
I knew so many extremely talented writers who were ignored because they were mothers, even though their writing was incredible. A benefit of having a book that sells well is that you have a bit of pull with a publisher. I loved working on Is It Bedtime Yet. It was very hard work, but it was incredibly rewarding. It felt like a book for and by parents in Aotearoa.
But I was burnt out after it. I had two stalkers. I was being sent photos of me walking my dog with messages saying I was being watched. An unhinged person tried and failed to sue me. It broke me. I felt like I'd ruined my family's life by following my dream. I was suicidal, and I struggled with my mental health for years afterwards.
It took five years to write Needs Adult Supervision. In those years, Rants in the Dark turned into a play that paid me more than the books ever did. My newsletter made more than my books did after two years.
Writing books is not lucrative for most authors. But not many people know this, so they expect you to be making lots of money. I was shocked to find out how small royalties are - usually, each year I earn more from the Public Lending Right for New Zealand authors than I do from royalties from my books.
Needs Adult Supervision took a lot of blood, sweat, tears and ADHD medication. It is a huge privilege to have a book published. It also - for me - feels like I've just bled all over a bunch of pages and now have to cope with people saying the blood isn't fresh enough, there's not enough blood, there needs to be more blood.
Of course, you get praise, and that's amazing. But the negativity… God, do you know how low my self-esteem is? I am not made for this industry (though the only authors I've met with good self-esteem are men).
This is all a very long way of saying that when I found out that AI had stolen three of my books - books about my life and my family - I was beyond distraught.
It came after I lost a contract to AI, knowing the prompts being used for their social media would be 'write for me in the style of our previous social media posts' at best or 'write in the style of Emily Writes' at worst.
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I loathe AI.
I am such an AI hater that I refuse to use long em dashes now or the phrasing "it's not just X, it's Y." I feel physically sick about the way AI is ruining writing and our interpersonal relationships.
I am revolted seeing comments on Facebook where it's clear the prompt was 'respond to this post'. Students are using AI to write essays, and why shouldn’t they when tutors use AI to mark them? They might even be using AI to develop the new curriculum. Apps like ChatGPT are driving people literally insane. And it’s all the more infuriating because AI isn’t intelligent and it’s all just a horrible new religion for the richest and most powerful people in the world.
People seem to be universally rejecting thinking as well as writing.
I am watching the craft that I love, my career, my hopes for the future - dissolve into the most soulless slop you've ever read.
I know I sound dramatic but literally - they stole my books.
When a reader informed me that Anthropic stole Rants in the Dark and Needs Adult Supervision to build their garbage AI, it felt like the floor had fallen out beneath me.
When I saw Is it Bedtime Yet had been stolen too, I felt immense guilt. Parents had trusted me with their stories, and they were stolen.
I joined a class action lawsuit along with hundreds of thousands of other authors. We won, and Anthropic AI has to pay out up to $1.5 billion (NZ$2.6b) to settle the claims.
A payment of NZ$5240 for each title stolen by the company will be paid out. That's a life-changing amount of money for me. (It’s a pittance for Anthropic; the AI companies have more money than God, and this is less than a slap on the wrist for them.)
Except, I won't get a cent.
Only New Zealand authors who are registered in the United States under their copyright laws will be paid out. The only authors likely to have been registered by their publishers in the US are those who sold a lot of books in the US.
I won't write another book again.
My friends teased me after Is it Bedtime Yet because I'd said I wouldn't do another book after Rants. And I said after Bedtime that I wouldn't do another book. Yet I did Needs Adult Supervision.
But it's over. It's really over. There are people out there feeding my words into ChatGPT and saying 're-write this'. And then they're publishing it.
Writers who need money now more than ever are losing contracts to AI systems that have stolen their skills.
Authors are having their blood stolen and pumped into a soulless machine that can never feel the pain or the joy of being human.
I will continue to write because I don't know what else to do. But I worry that writing, real writing, will end soon. Many freelance writers are being paid rates that haven't changed in a decade, if they're lucky - but many are being paid even less than they once were.
These days I am a one-woman publishing house, and I pay freelancers more than Stuff and NZME do.
Unless people choose to reject AI and pay actual humans for writing, I don't think we'll beat the machines.
If we do, it’ll be because of people like you.