Books

Stanford and Yale researchers extracted 95.8% of a copyrighted novel, word for word, from Claude 3.7 Sonnet. Gemini 2.5 Pro gave up 76.8% of Harry Potter without even requiring a jailbreak. Grok 3 handed over 70.3%. GPT-4.1 was the most resistant at 4.0%, but it still coughed up text after enough attempts. Thirteen books were tested. The words came out. Continue Reading →

“Slop” is the term for the rising tide of low-quality, AI-generated content flooding digital platforms—think hastily assembled eBooks, generic cookbooks, or recycled summaries churned out by tools like ChatGPT. It’s not just noise; it’s a calculated exploit of scale, prioritizing volume over value. According to an investigation by 404 Media earlier this month, the problem has hit public libraries, prompting action from Hoopla, a major eBook provider. Continue Reading →

This week, OpenAI – the organization behind ChatGPT – responded to class-action lawsuits from several book authors, including notable names like Sarah Silverman and Paul Tremblay. The authors allege that ChatGPT was trained on pirated copies of their books, thus infringing on their copyrights. Continue Reading →

In a move chillingly reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 496 (SF 496), which enacted sweeping changes to the state's education curriculum and banned books that are not deemed "age appropriate” or that contain "descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act," per Iowa Code 702.17. Continue Reading →

Several friends sent me books this summer. Paper ones with nice inscriptions. (It's hard to autograph an eBook.) Here's a quick overview of three I really enjoyed. I think you'll enjoy them too. Continue Reading →

Who has the power to change the world today? All of us. Continue Reading →

Oyster, the so-called “Netflix for books,” has added its second Big 5 publisher, Simon & Schuster, to its subscription service that lets you read as many ebooks as you want. Simon & Schuster is bringing its entire backlist of ebooks, which amounts to roughly 14,000 titles. The selection won’t include the latest releases, but most Continue Reading →

Finding time to sit down with a good book is challenging when you’re constantly faced with work deadlines, taking care of your kids or just dealing with life in general. But a new service called Rooster is looking to fix that by delivering novels in short installments that can easily be read during your commute, Continue Reading →

Oyster, the New York–based startup that aims to be the Netflix for ebooks, has added about 100 titles from Disney Publishing to its service and is rolling out a new children’s vertical Wednesday. Oyster, which launched last September, charges $9.95 per month for unlimited access to a library of over 100,000 in-copyright ebooks and has Continue Reading →

Microsoft has already built Xbox Music and Xbox Video apps for Windows 8, but the next target is books. A recent Microsoft job listing, discovered by Chinese Microsoft blog LiveSino, notes that the software giant is looking to hire a software design engineer to build “a groundbreaking interactive reading app on Windows, which incorporates books, Continue Reading →