Author Alert: Has Your Work Been Used To Train Meta’s AI?

From The Australian Society of Authors:

Today The Atlantic published a search tool allowing authors to search for their books in the LibGen dataset, which has been used to train Meta’s AI system. The ASA is horrified to see that Australian authors’ books have been included in this pirate database.

(By the way, this was posted on the ASA’s Meta-owned Instagram account.)

From the US Authors Guild:

Meta and other AI companies knew exactly what they were doing but they did it anyway. Why? Because they needed books for their quality writing, style, expression, and long-form narration and would rather steal them than ask and pay for them as they do for all of the other necessary components of their AI, such as electricity and programming.   

From the UK Society of Authors:

The Atlantic says that court documents show that staff at Meta discussed licensing books and research papers lawfully but instead chose to use stolen work because it was faster and cheaper. Given that Meta Platforms, Inc, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has a market capitalisation of £1.147 trillion, this is appalling behaviour.

Six editions of my own books are on the list of pirated books that was used to train Meta’s AI program. As if it isn’t bad enough that my books are constantly pirated, Meta is now taking authors’ work for their own commercial gain, without asking for permission from the authors or paying the authors or publishers.

If you’re an Australian author, you can check if your books are on the pirated LibGen list here and you can inform the ASA about this using this form.

US authors are automatically included in a class action against Meta and you can find out more here. UK authors can find more information here.

Authors, publishers and readers – if you use Facebook, Instagram, Threads or WhatsApp, you’re supporting Meta and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg. If the Cambridge Analytica scandal wasn’t enough, Meta also announced in January this year that it would no longer use professional fact checkers on its social media platforms.

What I’ve Been Reading

Cover of 'The Secret To Superhuman Strength' by Alison Bechdel with illustration of woman doing yogaThe Secret to Superhuman Strength is Alison Bechdel’s latest graphic memoir. It’s a characteristically funny, thought-provoking read, but also makes me very glad I’m not Alison Bechdel’s friend, relative or partner because she splatters everything on the page. It’s probably small consolation to them that she’s even harder on herself than she is on everyone else. This memoir, her third, is about her obsession with exercise—skiing, cycling, strength training, running, yoga, karate and trying out every exercise fad since the 1980s. Her focus on a healthy body does not prevent her from abusing alcohol, recreational drugs and prescription drugs, and having the worst sleep habits ever, just as her desire for secure love does not stop her incessant chasing after unsuitable women, even when she’s already in a relationship. She attempts therapy of various kinds, investigates Buddhism, and seeks wisdom in the lives and works of Kerouac, the Wordsworths, Shelley, Coleridge, Emerson and Margaret Fuller, until she finally realises:

“that you can’t repress pain and still expect to feel pleasure. And that feeling pain compared with the gray dread of avoiding it, was actually almost a kind of joy. In fact, joy was only possible because one’s existence—all this!—was going to end. What a tedious slog life would be without death!”

Cover of 'The War of Nerves' by Martin SixsmithI also really liked The War of Nerves: Inside the Cold War Mind by Martin Sixsmith. It uses psychological analyses of Cold War leaders, from Churchill and Stalin to Reagan, Thatcher and Gorbachev, as well as whole-population studies, to examine how the fear, tension and paranoia in both East and West changed world history. The author studied Russian and psychology in the UK, US and USSR, and worked as a journalist in Moscow at the end of the Cold War, so his perspective is well-informed and fascinating. The edition I read was published in 2021, before Putin invaded Ukraine, so it would be interesting to read an updated edition (although I now see that he published a book last year about Putin).

Cover of 'The Thursday Murder Club' by Richard OsmanI know everyone has already read The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, but I avoided it because something that popular written by a television celebrity would have to be bad, right? I was wrong. It’s a clever and very amusing mystery set in a retirement village, in which four elderly residents solve crimes with the reluctant help of a depressed detective inspector and his cheery sidekick. The plot does go completely off the rails towards the end, with three unconnected murders getting solved, several deaths, a Murder Club member reuniting with her estranged daughter, and the depressed detective gaining a girlfriend. There were just too many characters, too many red herrings, and not enough space devoted to the four main characters, who were all fascinating and funny.

I preferred the next book in the series, The Man Who Died Twice. The plot is still complex, but at least this time, the crimes are all linked and because they are related to the Secret Service past of enigmatic Elizabeth, the elaborate plot twists seem more plausible. There’s more attention paid this time to the relationships between the Murder Club members, which is very satisfying. Ibrahim is attacked and the others take revenge; Ron gets to act out his thuggish fantasies; Joyce’s narration is laugh-out-loud funny and her badly-knitted friendship bracelets become not only a running joke but an important clue. I’m looking forward to reading the other books in the series—although of course, there’s an enormous waiting list for them at the library. Apparently a film of the first book is being released this year.

What I’ve Been Reading

'The Deadly Daylight' by Ash HarrierThe Deadly Daylight by Ash Harrier was an enjoyable middle grade mystery, the first in a series featuring Alice England. Alice is an unusual twelve-year-old who works in her father’s funeral parlour and is able to detect messages from the dead. She is mystified by social conventions and polite lies, she notices details that others miss, and she speaks like an elderly librarian, so predictably, she finds it difficult to make friends with other children. However, she is drawn to an equally unusual girl at school, Violet, who is dangerously allergic to sunlight, and together they solve the mystery of Violet’s uncle’s strange death. It takes a little too long for anything exciting to happen, but there are lots of interesting twists in the final section and I liked watching Alice and Violet learn to compromise and become better at friendship. There is also a diverse cast of characters with disabilities – Alice has a congenital leg disability that makes it difficult for her to walk; Violet and her family have solar urticaria. The author and her neurodiverse daughter have written a thought-provoking article in a recent edition of Magpies discussing how characters with disabilities are portrayed in children’s literature and whether “non-marginalised allies” can successfully write about disabled and neurodivergent characters. The Deadly Daylight will appeal to confident middle grade readers who like mysteries with a hint of the supernatural – and if they enjoy it, there are two more novels about Alice’s adventures.

'London: A Guide for Curious Wanderers' by Jack ChesherI also enjoyed London: A Guide for Curious Wanderers, written by history blogger and London guide Jack Chesher, with beautiful illustrations by Katharine Fraser. It’s full of quirky, fascinating facts about London’s history, from Roman to modern times. There are sections on London’s secret tunnels, hidden rivers, lost islands, odd statues, street furniture, post boxes and more. It’s not comprehensive, but it’s a really intriguing read, complete with maps for your own self-guided tours if you’re lucky enough to be visiting London.

'Birnam Wood' by Eleanor CattonBirnam Wood by Eleanor Catton was an odd, but engrossing, novel set in New Zealand, in which a collective of anarchist guerrilla gardeners find themselves in an uneasy alliance with an American tech billionaire. It’s described as a ‘literary thriller’ but the Booker-Prize winning author has also stated she aimed to emulate Jane Austen’s prose style, so unsurprisingly, it doesn’t really work as a thriller. There’s a lot of telling rather than showing, the dialogue (which includes an eight-page monologue by one particularly annoying character about the evils of capitalism) is often unrealistic, the villain is cartoonish, there’s often too much detailed description when the pace needs to be faster, and the conclusion is abrupt with no real resolution. On the other hand, many of the characters are well-drawn, recognisable and amusing; the New Zealand setting is beautifully described; and there are a lot of interesting discussions about the environment, technology and the compromises that environmentalists and leftist politicians need to make in modern society in order to progress their goals. I also liked all the guerrilla gardening tips.

'Harry Potter and the Cursed Child' by JK Rowling, John Tiffany and Jack ThorneI finally got around to reading Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the “eighth Harry Potter story”, several years after everyone else. This is the published ‘rehearsal script’ of the six-hour play, based on an original story by J.K. Rowling, written by Jack Thorne and directed by John Tiffany. It’s essentially official fan-fiction, set nineteen years after the defeat of Voldemort, in which Albus Potter and his best friend Scorpius Malfoy learn not to mess around with time-travel and Harry yet again proves to be clueless about human relationships. I loved all the plot twists and magical world-building, even though it didn’t make complete sense. (Seriously, Hermione using an easily-solved riddle to hide a Time-Turner that shouldn’t even exist? And let’s not even try to imagine the logistics of that whole Voldemort thing.) But mostly I wondered why the story insisted on shoe-horning in girlfriends for Albus and Scorpius when it was clear that the deep love and trust between the two boys was driving the whole narrative. Is no-one allowed to be gay in this magical world (apart from dead closeted Dumbledore and his dead sociopathic love interest Grindelwald)? Scorpius was definitely my favourite character, and I liked how Draco was, predictably, a far more functional parent than poor abused orphan Harry. I have no idea how the cast and crew manage to translate all the magical action of the script onto the stage, but it must be amazing to watch.

Also – a reminder that I still have some free one-month subscriptions to Emily Gale’s substack, Voracious, to give away. Leave a comment below if you’re interested.

What I’ve Been Reading: Non-fiction about Mid-20th Century England

'London's Lost Department Stores' by Tessa Boase

London’s Lost Department Stores: A Vanished World of Dazzle and Dreams by Tessa Boase was a short, engrossing history of the grand and not-quite-so-grand department stores of London. In the early 1900s, there were more than a hundred of these stores, offering an extraordinary range of specialised services and products. Galeries Lafayette was renowned for its Parisian fashions and realistic wax mannequins with real human hair arranged in chic tableaux in the windows; Kennards in Croydon had a rooftop zoo and miniature steam railway; Gamages “sold alligators, Scouts’ kits, magic tricks and motor accessories”; Army and Navy Stores had a 1000-page catalogue from which its members could “order anything from dinner gongs, to laxatives, to ear trumpets, trusses and hair restorer.”

This book contains lots of fascinating photos, maps and anecdotes, as well as a discussion of how the stores reflected societal changes – for example, when shop assistants rebelled against being forced to “live in” (that is, pay rent to the shop owners to live in cramped dormitories above the store where they worked) and went on strike for better working conditions. Many of the department stores closed down in the 1960s and 1970s, followed by further decline with the rise of shopping malls, online retail and, of course, the COVID pandemic. I worked as a teenager in the old Grace Bros store on Sydney’s Broadway (now closed down, gutted and turned into a Westfield Shopping Centre), when the cashiers still used a pneumatic tube system to transport cylinders of cash from the service counters to the cashiers department and we would be regularly herded into the decaying ballroom for staff motivational speeches, so this was a fun, nostalgic read for me.

'1950s Childhood' by Janet Shepherd and John Shepherd

1950s Childhood by Janet Shepherd and John Shepherd also covers a lot for such a short book. There are chapters on post-war family life, changes to the school system following the 1944 Butler Education Act, how child welfare was improved by the introduction of the NHS, and what children ate after rationing ended. I especially enjoyed the photos – children playing in the street with no worries about traffic, entertaining themselves with Meccano and Dinky toy trucks, reading Beano, and gazing enthralled at a black-and-white television screen the size of a shoebox.

'School Songs and Gymslips' by Marilyn Yurdan

School Songs and Gymslips: Grammar Schools in the 1950s and 1960s by Marilyn Yurdan was a “light-hearted investigation” prompted by the author’s memories of her education at Holton Park, a girls’ grammar school in Oxfordshire. It includes a foreword by then Home Secretary Theresa May, who attended the school in the 1970s. This was a gentle, nostalgic look at hideous school uniforms, pointless school rules, eccentric teachers and disgusting school dinners, as well as more enjoyable experiences outside school involving pop records, cinema, dancing and fashion.

'Don't Knock the Corners Off' by Caroline Glyn

Don’t Knock the Corners Off by Caroline Glyn is an even more vivid and interesting look at school life in the 1960s, because it was written by a fifteen-year-old girl in 1963. No ordinary schoolgirl, it must be said – this was written as she was preparing for her second exhibition of paintings, her first poem had been published at the age of seven, and oh, she was also the great granddaughter of Elinor Glyn. This is a clearly autobiographical novel, about a free-spirited, artistic girl who doesn’t fit into the rigid English school system. Antonia starts off at a tough state primary school where she’s bullied mercilessly; then she applies to a posh girls’ grammar school where she’s forced to do homework and follow nonsensical rules; then she moves to a slightly more relaxed co-ed grammar school where she drifts along fairly happily until the headmaster realises how clever she is and tries to force her to do some work. She spends a term at the Sorbonne, then ends up at an art school where she finally feels she belongs. The voice is authentic and lively, often funny and very clearly the work of a teenager, full of complaints about how dull and stupid the other students are and how awful the teachers are and how much she hates maths.

Caroline Glyn, as would be expected from this novel, led a far from conventional life. She had published five novels by the time she was 21, lived in a tiny houseboat near Cambridge, studied art in Paris, became a nun, moved to Australia and died alone at the age of 32 while scrubbing the convent floor. Her former boyfriend wrote:

“Caroline was far more than merely ‘unusual’, she was unique … She had a terrific sense of humour and sense of fun, and we laughed all the time. Of course she had deep neuroses which defy all analysis, as she well knew … her flame flickered so momentarily before she went away to the Other Regions in which she so steadfastly believed. God was as real to her as the dacquiri in the photo, and she absolutely believed in angels and archangels, and often talked about them. She was only half here, and she left so soon to go back to where she belonged.”

'The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me' by Sofka Zinovieff

The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me by Sofka Zinovieff was a fascinating family memoir by the granddaughter of Robert Heber-Percy, the Mad Boyfriend of Lord Berners. Lord Berners, who was immortalised in Nancy Mitford’s novels as Lord Merlin, was a composer, writer and painter who threw beautiful parties at Faringdon House, where a flock of dyed pigeons circled over gatherings of famous guests – the Mitfords, Evelyn Waugh, the Lygon family who were portrayed in Brideshead Revisited, Gertrude Stein, H.G Wells, Elsa Schiaparelli, Salvador Dali, the Sitwells, the Betjemans, Diaghilev. Lord Berners and the Mad Boy made an odd couple, as Robert was three decades younger, uneducated, violent, “a hothead who rode naked through the grounds”, but the household situation became even odder when Robert suddenly married his pregnant girlfriend Jennifer Fry and moved her in to Faringdon during the Second World War. Unsurprisingly, the marriage didn’t last and Jennifer and her daughter Victoria moved away, but Victoria’s daughter unexpectedly inherited Faringdon after her grandfather decided she was the only “sensible one” in the family. Although she has now sold the house, she did own it for decades, attempting to restore it after years of neglect and discovering some of the secrets of its famous inhabitants and guests. This book is beautifully written and illustrated, with intriguing anecdotes and photographs, and will appeal to fans of the Mitfords and Brideshead Revisited.

What I’ve Been Doing Lately

Not writing, unfortunately, and not much book reading either, hence the lack of blog posts.

What I have been doing is:

– growing big, crunchy, delicious radishes.

Freshly picked bunch of radishes

Apparently what you need to grow large radishes is lots of sun, lots of water, lots of organic fertiliser, and being ruthless when thinning the seedlings.

– sewing a quilt.

Multicoloured quilt with hand quilted stitches

Hand-quilting while listening to podcasts or audiobooks is very relaxing and I have now managed to use up almost all of my fabric and batting stash, so hopefully I will not be tempted to do any more sewing.

– painting my bedroom pink. It looks very cheerful now.

– chatting with producer Lucy Butler about a television series she’s working on.

(I’ve also been doing less fun stuff, such as working at Day Job and having an infected tooth extracted, but you don’t want to know about that.)

Some miscellaneous memoranda:

– From the Smithsonian Magazine: An Icelandic Town Goes All Out to Save Baby Puffins. Did you know baby puffins are called pufflings? Pufflings!

– Here I am, being quoted in a dictionary! (I do not think it is a proper dictionary.)

– Excellent discussion here regarding whether Timmy the dog from the Famous Five was a border collie or not. I especially liked the speculation about why George in the new BBC series is wearing modern clothes while the rest are dressed in 1950s clothes (“Maybe she is from our time and Uncle Quentin invented a Time Machine and she got sent back”) and whether Julian grew up to be Tory MP Julian Fawcett from Ghosts.

– Speaking of Ghosts, the fifth and final series is released in November. I love this show and I’ll be sad to see the end of it. (Obviously I mean BBC Ghosts, not the American one, which looks awful, although hopefully it’s making the original creators lots of money. Fellow Australians, you can watch Series 4 of the proper Ghosts on ABC iView now.)