This came out yesterday, via the Hollywood Reporter. Some authors filed a class action against Anthropic, and for some reason thought it would be a good idea to use me in their arguments:
The authors also argue that Anthropic is depriving authors of book sales by facilitating the creation of rip-offs. When Kara Swisher released Burn Book earlier this year, Amazon was flooded with AI-generated copycats, according to the complaint. In another instance, author Jane Friedman discovered a “cache of garbage books” written under her name.
These fraudsters, the lawsuit says, turn to Claude to generate such content. “It was reported that a man named Tim Boucher had ‘written’ 97 books using Anthropic’s Claude (as well as OpenAI’s ChatGPT) in less than year, and sold them at prices from $1.99 to $5.99,” the complaint states. “Claude could not generate this kind of long-form content if it were not trained on a large quantity of books, books for which Anthropic paid authors nothing.”
I take exception to both The Hollywood Reporter’s characterization of me, and the lawsuits. I sent THR a rebuttal of the claim that I am a “fraudster,” as anyone who has read this blog or seen my many interviews and media appearances would know that I have been completely up front about what I’m doing.
There’s a great deal more to be said here…
Here is the court document where my AI Lore books are referenced.
Tim B.
text from the court document:
“52. Claude in particular has been used to generate cheap book content. For example, in May 2023, it was reported that a man named Tim Boucher had “written” 97 books using Anthropic’s Claude (as well as OpenAI’s ChatGPT) in less than year, and sold them at prices from $1.99 to $5.99.39 Each book took a mere “six to eight hours” to “write” from beginning to end. Claude could not generate this kind of long-form content if it were not trained on a large quantity of books, books for which Anthropic paid authors nothing.”