As several major publishers sell their authors’ works to tech giants for large language model fodder, MIT Press is asking authors for their input before any training deals are made, and claims that it’s been approached by AI companies to do so.
On November 7, MIT Press emailed its authors with the subject line “Response Requested: MIT Press author views on LLM training data and licensing.” In it, MIT Press says that it has been approached by “several AI companies and data brokers for training generative AI tools in exchange for payment.” It goes on to say that it has not entered into any such deal “thus far” but recognizes that MIT Press content is “already being used for training purposes.”
The full email is below:
“Dear MIT Press authors,