LIBRARY HEIST OF THE DIGITAL AGE: META CAUGHT RED-HANDED STUFFING ENTIRE LIBRARIES INTO AI’S HUNGRY BRAIN-HOLE
In what can only be described as the nerdiest heist since someone tried to steal the Declaration of Independence, Facebook parent company Meta has been caught shoving other people’s books down its artificial intelligence’s metaphorical throat without so much as a “may I?” or a royalty check.
ANGRY NERDS WITH PITCHFORKS AND THESAURUSES
Today, a mob of furious novelists armed with nothing but their vocabularies and righteous indignation descended upon Meta’s London office, demanding justice for their word-babies. Authors Kate Mosse, Tracy Chevalier, and poet Daljit Nagra led the charge, reportedly bringing extra semicolons in case things got ugly.
“What Meta has done is basically walk into a f@#king library, stuff thousands of books into a giant blender, and pour the literary smoothie directly into their algorithm’s gaping maw,” said bestselling author Richard Fictional, who we just made up but sounds plausible enough. “They’ve stolen our intellectual property faster than a college student with a deadline and access to ChatGPT.”
THE GREAT BOOK ROBBERY: NOW IN DIGITAL
According to sources that definitely exist, Meta trained its AI models using the LibGen database, essentially treating copyrighted works like an all-you-can-eat buffet where the authors don’t get paid and the chef is crying in the corner.
“They’ve pirated more books than a drunk college sophomore with a torrent client,” explained Dr. Obvious Metaphor, head of the Department of Telling You What You Already Know at Cambridge University. “Approximately 97.8% of all words ever arranged in a meaningful order have now been consumed by Meta’s word-hungry algorithms.”
ZUCKERBERG’S DEFENSE CONSISTS ENTIRELY OF SHRUGGING EMOJI
When reached for comment, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg allegedly responded with a statement reading, “Words are just, like, vibrations in the air, man. Can you really OWN vibrations? That’s deep.” This statement was definitely not made up by us for comedic effect.
Company spokesperson Trudy Deflection added, “We prefer to think of it as ‘surprise adoption’ rather than ‘theft.’ Besides, books were getting lonely sitting on shelves. Now they’re part of something bigger, like being digested by a digital whale.”
WRITERS THREATEN TO RESPOND WITH THE ONLY WEAPON THEY HAVE: MORE WORDS
In response to the protests, several authors have threatened to write scathing novels featuring thinly-veiled villain characters named “Bark Muckerberg” who steal people’s diaries and sell them to robots.
“My next book will feature a dystopian tech CEO with lizard-like qualities who harvests human creativity to feed his soul-sucking machines,” threatened novelist Emma Wordsmith, adjusting her horn-rimmed glasses menacingly. “And the sex scenes will be VERY unflattering.”
According to a study we just invented, 83% of AI models now consist of regurgitated human genius, 15% Reddit posts about cats, and 2% recipes for banana bread that unnecessarily include the author’s life story.
As the protest continues, Meta engineers are reportedly working on a new algorithm that can generate apologies without actually admitting wrongdoing, a technology breakthrough that politicians worldwide are watching with great interest.
In related news, the company’s next AI model will reportedly be trained exclusively on takeout menus and the back of shampoo bottles to avoid further controversy, though experts predict it will still somehow manage to write better poetry than most humans.
