Penguin Random House (PRH), the largest of the Big Five publishing imprints, is pushing back against its published works being used to train AI.
As first reported by The Bookseller, PRH has changed its copyright wording to target AI. The new rules state that “no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.” This statement will appear in all new titles across PRH’s imprints, as well as reprints of backlist titles.
PRH’s changing of its copyright wording to combat AI training makes it the first of the Big Five publishers to take such an action against AI, at least publicly. Mashable has reached out to the remaining Big Five trade publishers — Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Simon & Schuster — for comment.
PRH’s move is the latest in a series of copyright actions by publishers against AI scraping. In late 2023, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement, and in Oct. of 2024, they also sent a cease and desist letter to the Jeff Bezos-backed AI startup Perplexity. And with companies allowing seemingly anything to be trained for AI, from X posts to LinkedIn data, who can blame them?
