Some 10,000 authors have come together to publish an empty book in protest of the unauthorised use of their work by AI firms.
Richard Osman, Jeanette Winterson, and Kazuo Ishiguro are among the writers to have participated in the project, which seeks to highlight the damaging impact that this has on their livelihoods and the publishing industry.
Copies of Don’t Steal This Book, which is devoid of any text except for the names of the authors involved, will be distributed at the London book fair on Tuesday (10 March), a week before the UK government is due to issue an assessment on the economic cost of proposed changes in copyright law.
Copyrighted work, such as books taken from the open web, is among the extensive data used by generative AI to develop tools such as chatbots.
This has led to dozens of lawsuits from authors and publishers in recent years. In 2025 Anthropic, the leading AI firm behind the Claude chatbot, agreed to settle a £1.1bn class-action lawsuit by book authors who said the start-up used pirated copies of their works to train its product.
Against mounting backlash from creative professionals over AI companies’ use of their work, ministers are due to deliver an economic impact assessment as well as a progress update on a consultation regarding proposed legal reforms.
Under those proposals, UK copyright law would be relaxed in order to allow AI companies to use an author’s work to train their AI models without permission or remuneration – unless the owner has flagged that they want to “opt out” of the process.
A public consultation on the topic held last February found just 3 per cent of respondents agreed with the proposal, and 95 per cent of respondents argued for the UK’s copyright laws to be maintained or strengthened further.
Following the consultation, the government is understood to be considering a “commercial research” exception instead, which creative professionals fear could be exploited by AI firms to take works without permission.
On the book’s back cover, a message reads: “The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies”.
The organiser of Don’t Steal This Book, Ed Newton-Rex, a composer and campaigner for protecting artists’ copyright, said the AI industry was “built on stolen work [....] taken without permission or payment”.
“This is not a victimless crime,” he continued. “Generative AI competes with the people whose work it is trained on, robbing them of their livelihoods. The government must protect the UK’s creatives, and refuse to legalise the theft of creative work by AI companies.”
In a statement, author Jeanette Winterson said: “My message to big tech is simple. If you can’t actively support us (and you aren’t doing that) then stop stealing our stuff. Your bots can’t do what we do. Accept it and move on.”
Another participant, Adam Kay, the bestselling author of This Is Going to Hurt, added: “It’s bad enough that AI has reduced customer service to incompetent chatbots and turned social media into low-quality slop, let’s not kill the publishing industry while we’re at it. We all pay to read books, and the robots can do the same.”
Other authors to feature in Don’t Steal This Book include Irish writer Marian Keyes, Noughts and Crosses author Malorie Blackman, Philippa Gregory, and Mick Herron.
A government spokesperson told The Guardian: “The government wants a copyright regime that values and protects human creativity, can be trusted, and unlocks innovation.
“We will continue to engage closely with the creative sector on this issue, and we will meet our commitment to update parliament by March 18th.”
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