AI in fiction

My Books Are Feeding Meta’s AI Brat

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On March 20, 2025, in an article in The Atlantic entitled “The Unbelievable Scale of AI’s Pirated-Books Problem”, Alex Reisner disclosed how META pirated millions of books and research papers to train their flagship AI model Llama 3 to be competitive with products like ChatGPT. Reasons for this illegal action is simply time; asking permission and licensing takes too much time and is too expensive.

On the same day, The Atlantic provided a link to LibGen (the pirated-books database that Meta used to train its AI) so authors could search its collection of millions of illegally captured books and scientific papers. I went there and searched my name for my novels, non-fiction books and scientific papers and discovered several of my works in their AI training collection.

Two of my many scientific papers appeared in LibGen under my scientific author name Norina Munteanu. The first scholarly article came from my post grad work at the University of Victoria on the effects of mine tailing effluent on an oligotrophic lake, published in 1984 in Environmental Pollution Series A, Ecological and Biological Volume 33, Issue 1. The second article on the effect of current on settling periphyton came from my M.Sc. ecology research published in 1981 in Hydrobiologia, Volume #78.

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Three of my thirteen novels appeared in LibGen under my fiction author name Nina Munteanu. I found it interesting how their bots captured a good range of my works. These included two of my earliest works. Collision with Paradise (2005) is an ecological science fiction adventure and work of erotica; Darwin’s Paradox (2007) is a science fiction medical-eco thriller that features the domination of society by an intelligent AI community. The bots also found my latest novel, A Diary in the Age of Water (2020), a climate thriller and work of eco-fiction that follows four generations of women and their relationship to water.

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Each of these works has been highly successful in sales and has received a fair bit of attention and recognition.

When Genevieve Dubois, Zeta Corp’s hot shot starship pilot, accepts a research mission aboard AI ship ZAC to the mysterious planet Eos, she not only collides with her guilty past but with her own ultimate fantasy. On a yearning quest for paradise, Genevieve thinks she’s found it in Eos and its people; only to discover that she has brought the seed of destruction that will destroy this verdant planet.

Recognition: Gaylactic Spectrum Award (nominee)

“Collision with Paradise is ideal for readers who enjoy dark, introspective science fiction that explores complex moral dilemmas and psychological depth within a lush mythologically-rich setting.”—The Storygraph

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A devastating disease. A world on the brink of violent change. And one woman who can save it or destroy it all. Julie Crane must confront the will of the ambitious virus lurking inside her to fulfill her final destiny as Darwin’s Paradox, the key to the evolution of an entire civilization. Darwin’s Paradox is a novel about a woman s fierce love and her courageous journey toward forgiveness, trust, and letting go to the tide of her heart.

Recognition: Readers Choice Award (Midwest Book Review); Readers Choice (Delta Optimist); Aurora Award (nominee)

“Darwin’s Paradox is a thrill ride that makes you think and tugs the heart.”—Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo and Nebula Award winning author of Rollback

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This gritty memoir describes a near-future Toronto in the grips of severe water scarcity during a time when China owns the USA and the USA owns Canada. A Diary in the Age of Water follows the climate-induced journey of Earth and humanity through four generations of women, each with a unique relationship to water. The diary spans a twenty-year period in the mid-twenty-first century of 33-year-old Lynna, a single mother and limnologist of international water utility CanadaCorp, and who witnesses disturbing events that she doesn’t realize will soon lead to humanity’s demise. 

Recognition: 2020 Foreword Indies Book of the Year Award (Bronze); 2020 Titan Literary Book Award (Silver); 2021 International Book Award (Finalist).

“If you believe Canada’s water will remain free forever (or that it’s truly free now) Munteanu asks you to think again. Readers have called ‘A Diary in the Age of Water’ “terrifying,” “engrossing,” and “literary.” We call it wisdom.”—LIISBETH

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The April 3, 2025 article by Ella Creamer of The Guardian noted that a US court filing alleged that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg approved the company’s use of the notorious “shadow library”, LibGen, which contains more than 7.5 million books and 81 million research papers. According to Toby Walsh, leading AI researcher at the University of New South Wales: “As far as we know, there was an explicit instruction from Mark Zuckerberg to ignore copyright.”

This begs the question of the role and power of copyright law.

“Copyright law is not complicated at all,” said Richard Osman, author of The Thursday Murder Club series. “If you want to use an author’s work you need to ask for permission. If you use it without permission you’re breaking the law. It’s so simple.”

If it’s so simple then why is Meta and others getting away with it? For its defence, the tech giant is claiming “fair use”, relying on this term permitting the limited use of copyrighted material without the owner’s permission (my italics).

It would seem that just as Trump trumped the presidency, Zuckerberg and his AI minion bots have trumped the copyright law—by flagrantly violating it and getting away with it—so far (on both counts).

The actions of Meta were characterized by Society of Authors chair Vanessa Fox O’Louglin as “illegal, shocking, and utterly devastating for writers.” O’Louglin added that “a book can take a year or longer to write. Meta has stolen books so that their AI can reproduce creative content, potentially putting these same authors out of business.”

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Three of my novels pirated for AI training

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Reflecting many authors’ outrage throughout the world, Novelist AJ West remarked, “To have my beautiful books ripped off like this without my permission and without a penny of compensation then fed to the AI monster feels like I’ve been mugged.” Australian Author Sophie Cunningham said, “The average writer earns about $18,000 a year on their writing. It’s one thing to be underpaid. It’s another thing to find that [their] work is being used by a company that you don’t trust.” Bestselling author Hannah Kent said, “If feels a little like my body of work has been plundered.” She adds that this, “opens the door to others also feeling like this is an acceptable way to treat intellectual copyright and creatives who already…are expected to [contribute] so much for free or without due recompense.” Both Kent and Cunningham exhort governments to weigh in with more powerful regulation. And this is precisely what may occur. Nicola Heath of ABC.net.au writes, “the outcomes of the various AI copyright infringement cases currently underway in the US will shape how AI is trained in the future.”

According to The March 20, 2025 Authors Guild article “Meta’s Massive AI Training Book Heist: What Authors Need to Know,” legal action is underway against Meta, OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthopic, and other AI companies for using pirated books. The Authors Guild is a plaintiff in the class action lawsuit against OpenAI, along with John Grisham, Jodi Picoult, David Baldacci, George R.R. Martin, and 13 other authors, but the claims are made on behalf of all US authors whose works have been ingested into GPT. 

The Authors Guild suggests five things authors can do to defend their rights:

  1. Send a formal notice: If your books are in the LibGen dataset, send a letter to Meta and other AI companies stating they do not have the right to use your books.
  2. Join the Authors Guild: You should join the Guild and support our joint advocacy to ensure that the writing profession remains alive and vibrant in the age of AI. We give authors a voice, and there is power in numbers. We can also help you ensure that your contracts protect you against unwanted AI use of your work. 
  3. Protect your works: Add a “NO AI TRAINING” notice on the copyright page of your works. For online work, you can update your website’s robots.txt file to block AI bots.
  4. Get Human Authored certification: Distinguish your work in an increasingly AI-saturated market with the Authors Guild’s certification program. This visible mark verifies your book was created by a human, not generated by AI.
  5. Stay informed. The Authors Guild suggest signing up for the free Guild biweekly newsletter to keep updated on lawsuits and legislation that could impact you and your rights. The legal landscape is changing rapidly, and they are keeping close watch. 

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How do I feel about all this? As a female Canadian author of climate fiction? As a thinking, feeling human being living in The Age of Water? Well, to tell the truth, it kinda makes me want a donut*…

 *as delivered by James Holden in Season 3, Episode 7 of “The Expanse”

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Aspens in fall, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)

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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit  www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

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The AI Wave: To AI or not to AI … That is the Question…

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I recently ran across a list posted on social media of the 20 most popular AI tools for productivity in writing. I only knew two of them. This heightened my anxiety about what I know and am prepared for in the use of genAI, particularly in academic settings, where I teach writing at university. And it got me thinking why I was so anxious…

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I shared the list with my colleagues at the university writing centre and one instructor who was actively following AI tools admitted that they knew only a few of the listed tools as well. They further shared that they were feeling increasingly apprehensive about genAI’s impact on higher education. “It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed,” they ended.

(Photo: Nina writing her novel at a cafe)

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This was my exact sentiment: a kind of apprehensive excitement. An understanding that all communicators stand at the precipice of a major paradigm shift in tool use. The ramifications this will have on all aspects of effective and efficient communication will span from redefining plagiarism to reinventing creativity. As with all powerful tools—aside from the obvious threat of misuse—there is always something lost with the gain and I wonder what we are losing with all this. I have some ideas, and they do bother me from time to time.

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Applications of Generative AI (image by Neebel Technologies)

I do think it important for me as a communicator and writing instructor to understand the trade offs and to work with them.

When the world adopted the portable calculator, rote knowledge of basic math suffered. I know; I tested it during a lab exam when I was teaching college biology many years back. I forbid the use of calculators in the test and many students, who had lost the ability to do long division or multiplication by hand, lost marks. For some reason, I’m still not sure of, it was important for me to insist on students doing math longhand (a basic skill fast becoming obsolete like cursive writing) and punish those who had lost the art. Perhaps I was drawing on Isaac Asimov’s possibly prescient 1957 short story satire The Feeling of Power, which explored the limitations of a future world that lost its basic skills to machines. The corollary, I suppose, is that more complex and conceptual math gained some ground through this handy and efficient tool. Machines have their advantages, certainly. And generative AI is just one sophisticated aspect of machine use.

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Consequences to Creative Writing

In my world of professional fiction authors, there is a palpable fear of being replaced by AI as story creators: a version of the ultimate science fiction horror plot of being taken over by the machine world (I’ve even exploited that in my SF thrillers Angel of Chaos and Darwin’s Paradox).

Given our unique powers of imagination, I don’t think that will happen (very soon, if ever successfully). Though, as we dummy-down and simplify complex stories for fast-paced multiplex audiences addicted to fast-paced bite-sized and easy to digest entertainment, AI-generated narratives could get by. How is all this affecting the publishing industry now? I recently learned that one of the top five online science fiction magazines, Metastellar, accepts AI-assisted stories with the proviso that “they better be good.” And Metastellar provides some convincing reasons. This has become a hot topic among my fellow professional writers at SF Canada.  One colleague informed me that a “new publisher Spines plans to disrupt industry by publishing 8000 AI books in 2025 alone.” On checking the news release, I discovered that Spines is, in fact, a tech firm trying to make its mark on publishing, primarily through the use of AI. The company offers the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish, and distribute books. They are, in fact, a vanity publishing platform (essentially a service for self-publishing), charging up to $5000 a book and often taking just three weeks to go from manuscript to a published title. The quality of what they will produce is unclear—and questionable.

All to serve as metaphor for what I and my colleagues at university are striving to achieve with students in their academic writing: excellence in communication, particularly in conveying complex scenarios that require creative solutions where clear, concise, and convincing writing is requisite.

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I still find myself reluctant to use AI in my writing and communication, though I’ve at times slid into using AI for research and initial summaries to save time. I do this rarely because I absolutely enjoy doing research. I enjoy challenging my brain to summarize key points and write a good line. I enjoy the thrill of unanticipated discoveries, which always happen on these forays. I also recognize that many people do not share my enthusiasm for these brain exercises.

(Photo: Nina writing in another cafe)

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I think that AI alone will not replace human mind for unique creativity. I didn’t say “can not.” It could; but it won’t. This is because even as genAI becomes infused in many aspects of life pursuit, there will remain those like that rare mathematician capable of doing math by hand in The Feeling of Power, valued not just because they are rare, but because in that rarity, they fulfill a critical role. When the machines stalled in their ability to move society forward in The Feeling of Power and all seemed lost, this archaic mathematician presented new innovation with basic math. I’m not suggesting that the technology will all break down, plunging the world into darkness (though this remains a possibility and is still a great plot for science fiction); but I submit that diversity rules over monopoly when it comes to survival.   

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Five Mass Extinctions

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This may seem a rather dark projection of the future, but consider that over the millennia, after five mass extinctions and with the sixth mass extinction underway, diversity has always saved the world. Within that necessary diversity, it is the nurtured rarities, the outliers, the misfits and nonconformists that survived the destruction of the previous world. Each time, diversity made that possible. As though engrained in Nature’s world building.

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Mass Extinctions (image by National Geographic)

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Ecologists call it ecological succession, others use the term “creative-destruction” to describe the recursive pattern of living and non-living things of the planet. Both describe how the oligarchs of an established climax ecosystem fail due to change or disturbance and are replaced by a previous rare misfit or immigrant better suited to the new environment. 

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Primary and secondary succession in two different ecosystems

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I think AI is part of our succession. Our use of AI in all its forms will represent a diversity of reaction and action that represent our own diversity and potential to survive in a changing world. All to say: relax and embrace the outliers.

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Writing in nature (photo by Nina Munteanu)

As William Gibson so famously said in 1993: The Future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed. And maybe that’s a good thing…

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So…

…To AI, or not to AI, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of terrible writing,
Or to take arms against a sea of scribbles
And by opposing end them. To think—to write,
No more; and by writing to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That tech is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To think, to write;
To write, perchance to create—ay, there’s the rub:
For in that creation of unique thoughts what others may come,
When we have shuffled off this genAI…

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Writing in Nature (photo by Nina Munteanu)

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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.

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