Kevin Kelly, the cofounder of Wired and a longtime tech philosopher, has a take on AI and copyright that’ll probably make most authors lose their minds. Instead of suing AI companies for scraping their work, Kelly thinks authors should actually want their books in these models. Wild, right?

Since 2023, the Authors Guild and individual writers have been going after OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic for allegedly training their large language models on millions of copyrighted books without permission. Anthropic recently settled for $1.5 billion, with authors receiving $3,000 per book. But Kelly isn’t interested in the payout, he’s more concerned about whether his ideas are actually being used.

Kelly checked Anthropic’s database and found four of his books there, including classics like “What Technology Wants” and “The Inevitable”. The kicker? Anthropic apparently never actually used them for training, even though they made copies. Kelly’s reaction was basically: “Wait, you’re NOT using them? Ugh”.

“I’m interested in getting my ideas out there and being read”, Kelly explained. “The AIs are acting like our libraries, a compression of everything we know or think we know. I want my stuff to be included in that”. He compared it to how books spread through actual libraries. For him, infinitesimal influence is always better than zero influence.

Kelly’s not against the lawsuits exactly, but he thinks most of the settlement money goes to lawyers and publishers rather than the actual creators. He registered for the class action just to see what would happen, not because he needed the cash.

That said, Kelly isn’t naive about the current situation. He won’t directly send his books to AI companies because they’re legally stuck in a bind, they can’t disclose exactly what they’ve trained on, so accepting donations would be too risky. Plus, with only about a dozen books to his name, it wouldn’t even be worth their administrative effort.

When asked if AI could replace writers today, Kelly’s honest: he uses AI mostly for research, brainstorming, and getting editorial feedback. He rarely uses the actual words it suggests. “There are very, very few times when any of the words that it suggests are words that I would use”, he said.

He does think human writers have a future, though. The real value isn’t in the physical copy or digital file, it’s in the author themselves. Maybe it’s giving talks, connecting with readers through email, or the intangible relationship people have with creators. The book itself becomes free or nearly worthless, but everything around it becomes precious.

Kelly’s perspective here is definitely contrarian, but it reflects how the creator economy is already shifting. Whether other authors will embrace this philosophy is another question entirely.