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Academic authors 'shocked' after Taylor & Francis sells access to their research to Microsoft AI (www.thebookseller.com)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by fasterandworse@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems

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Authors have expressed their shock after the news that academic publisher Taylor & Francis, which owns Routledge, had sold access to its authors’ research as part of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) partnership with Microsoft—a deal worth almost £8m ($10m) in its first year.

On top of it all, that is such a low-ball number from Microsoft

The agreement with Microsoft was included in a trading update by the publisher’s parent company in May this year. However, academics published by the group claim they have not been told about the AI deal, were not given the opportunity to opt out and are receiving no extra payment for the use of their research by the tech company.

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[–] fasterandworse@awful.systems 42 points 4 months ago (1 children)

"it is providing Microsoft non-exclusive access to advanced learning content and data to help improve relevance and performance of AI systems".

I wish it wasn't normal to call these "systems" instead of "products"

[–] TWeaK@lemm.ee 22 points 4 months ago

Exactly. There needs to be a proper lawsuit challenging AI businesses, and the fact they're taking out these contracts now, after the fact, suggests they know they're liable. They've tried hiding behind the fair use research exemption, however their "research" is complete private and secret, offers no benefit to the academic community, and is entirely driven by commercial product development.

I wonder if individual users have standing to claim for the initial harvesting from before these licenses? At the time, while they got it from reddit or wherever, they collected it without any license, which I think means the original rights holder should be able to sue.