Publishers Sue Big Tech Over AI While Quietly Using It Themselves

Three major book publishers are now using AI to produce marketing copy, jacket copy and jacket art, WIRED's Adam Morgan reported last week — even as the industry's lawsuits over AI training practices make their way through the courts.

That contradiction sits at the center of a sharply argued piece published around the Authors Guild's "Whose Truth? Writers and Readers Forum," held last weekend. The essay's author, a working writer, appeared on a panel about authorship and AI and came away convinced that publishing's leadership has already capitulated. "It feels as though publishers, at least the people in the C-suites, have already given up, deferring to tech companies with barely a whimper, let alone a bang," the writer states.

What does the double game look like?

The mechanics are straightforward. AI companies train large language models (software that generates text by learning patterns from massive datasets) on copyrighted books, claiming the practice counts as "transformative fair use" — the legal doctrine that permits limited use of protected material. They frame this as "reading" rather than stealing.

Recently unsealed court files, reported by Publishers Weekly, show that OpenAI and Microsoft knew this copying was illegal and could hurt authors. The essay's response is blunt: "Of course they knew!" It also notes that a federal ruling in June 2025 went in Anthropic's favor in a landmark copyright infringement suit brought by authors including Bartz, Graeber, Wallace and Johnson.

Meanwhile, the publishing side of the ledger tells its own story.

• Three major publishers use AI for marketing and jacket copy and art, per WIRED.
• The Big Five publishers are, in the author's assessment, doing far less than the Authors Guild to fight AI.
• Amazon — valued at $2.8 trillion — holds major investments in Anthropic and OpenAI, while the US government has refused to open an antitrust investigation against the company.

Why the authorship panel hit a nerve

The writer draws on personal history to explain how seriously publishers have always treated copyright — against everyone except, apparently, Big Tech. For their first book, Slaughterhouse 90210, a Tumblr-turned-coffee-table project, Macmillan's legal team ruled that TV screenshots couldn't appear in print without permission. The writer ultimately spent about $50,000 purchasing images through Getty and other photo agencies, "painstakingly deciding how much an image is worth."

A panel the author attended earlier that day, "Writing About Real People," spent considerable time on the need to secure permissions for song lyrics or film quotes. Publishers, the author observes, have always erred on the side of caution to avoid lawsuits from other media companies. A biographer might quote a line or two of a singer's songbook — very rarely more.

Against that backdrop, the author writes, "we suddenly live in a time when the tech bros have officially declared themselves entitled to all books claiming transformative fair use. Our books belong to them now."

What does this change for writers and publishing staff?

The author's answer: leverage, and who has it. It is impossible, the essay argues, for publishers to stand against AI in a few lawsuits on one hand while devaluing their own employees' work and investing in AI software on the other. Staff at the houses using AI are, per the WIRED reporting, in open revolt. Literary Hub, cited in the piece, warns that AI is getting harder to spot in contemporary publishing — an existential problem for the industry.

The author also dismisses the hope that government will ride to the rescue. Mainstream Democrats are, in the essay's words, "very much beholden to Big Tech" — it points to reporting that Nancy Pelosi's household is Congress's biggest data-center investor. Midterm elections might bring more AI oversight, the author allows, but "depending on the government to save us is a mistake."

The essay closes on labor, not copyright: "There are so many uncertainties about how AI will affect our future, but I know for sure that in the meantime too many businesses are caving to the AI overlords with barely a fight. Workers deserve better."

With publishers licensing AI workflows at one desk and litigating them at another, the industry's next contract round — and the pending fair-use rulings — will decide which hand wins.