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UK Government Accused of Using AI to Commit “Stealth Book Club Heist,” Richard Osman Demands Royal Ransom

In a scandal that has rocked both Westminster and the local Waterstones’ reading nook, the British government has unveiled its plan to transform the UK into an AI “superpower” by granting artificial intelligence unhindered access to the nation’s beloved creative works. Naturally, best-selling authors Richard Osman and Kate Mosse are convinced this is less of a visionary step forward and more like installing a seatbelt on a getaway car for corporate art thieves.

“They’re calling it data mining,” an exasperated Osman clarified while gesturing toward a copy of *The Thursday Murder Club*. “I call it daylight robbery! What’s next? Letting Alexa narrate my audiobooks for free and call herself co-author?”

Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose bold 50-point AI action plan apparently involves bulldozing copyright law with the subtlety of a bulldozer driving through a library, is keen to remind the country that Britain has “always been at the cutting edge of technology.” Critics suggest the PM may be confusing technology with colonization, but the jury’s still out.

The government insists that AI needs to devour copyrighted material to “train”—essentially reducing centuries of human creativity and sweat-soaked coffee-stained manuscripts into protein shakes for hungry algorithms. “The idea of protecting authors is outdated,” said one overly caffeinated civil servant who clearly hasn’t read a book since *Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone*. “Machine learning is the future. Try copyrighting the future. You can’t.”

Kate Mosse, the acclaimed author of *Labyrinth*, put down her quill long enough to voice her outrage. “If we don’t stand up now, AI will turn our beautifully crafted books into soulless data. Imagine *The Great Gatsby* rewritten as *The Slightly Above Average Gatsby Who Got Stuck at a Red Light*. That’s your future, Britain!”

Meanwhile, government spokespeople are staying on-brand in their technocratic spin, claiming this AI initiative will catapult the UK into a global league of tech superpowers, right between “Microsoft” and “That Robot Dog from Boston Dynamics No One Trusts.” When reached for comment, an AI named “Codex Cruncher 9000” simply ran off with unsigned copies of Osman and Mosse’s books.

Some tech analysts argue this is less about superpower status and more about Big Tech cutting out the middleman—or in this case, the middle novelist. “AI doesn’t sleep. AI doesn’t take tea breaks,” explained a tech guru sipping Red Bull like the 21st-century oracle he is. “Why pay authors when we can just feed your next bestseller to Siri and let her cough up *The Fault In Our Algorithms*?”

When asked to comment on Starmer’s strategy, Booker Prize judges issued a collective groan audible from as far away as Dublin. Literary agents, meanwhile, are scrambling to recode Shakespeare as a video game character in hopes of staying relevant.

“First they came for the authors,” Osman quipped during an emergency author meeting held at a Pret A Manger. “But when they come for the podcasters, *then* people will care!”

At press time, a coalition of British authors and poets had sent Starmer’s office a strongly worded letter written entirely in iambic pentameter. The AI reading it reportedly asked for a second GPU to process the sarcasm.