Technology Jul 29, 2026 · 1 min read

Artists are lawyering up against AI slop, and some are even winning

When The Atlantic published a searchable dataset of works used to train AI, Kirk Wallace Johnson, like a lot of artists, looked for his name out of curiosity. And, like a lot of artists, he found it. Essentially, his books, like The Feather Thief and The Fishermen and the Dragon - nonfiction tomes t...

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The Verge
by Terrence O’Brien
Artists are lawyering up against AI slop, and some are even winning
a middle finger being at an AI sparkle
Artists whose work has been co-opted by AI are taking to court. | Image: Alex Parkin / The Verge

When The Atlantic published a searchable dataset of works used to train AI, Kirk Wallace Johnson, like a lot of artists, looked for his name out of curiosity. And, like a lot of artists, he found it. Essentially, his books, like The Feather Thief and The Fishermen and the Dragon - nonfiction tomes that he spent "five to six years researching, writing, and investigating" - had been pirated and fed to a chatbot. He says he felt a "cocktail" of emotions: "anger over the brazenness of the theft, worry over what this means for writers, and a healthy thirst for revenge on these massive corporations that have become galactically wealthy" using his …

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This article was originally published by The Verge and written by Terrence O’Brien.

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