The artificial intelligence revolution has arrived with a dirty secret: it’s built on theft. Major AI companies have systematically stolen millions of copyrighted works from journalists, authors, and artists, and have used this content to train systems to replace the very creators they’ve robbed. This digital land grab represents one of the most audacious cases of corporate piracy in modern history, raising urgent questions about creativity, labor, and justice in the age of AI.

Internal documents and lawsuits have exposed the shocking scale of AI companies’ piracy. Meta allegedly pirated a staggering 81 terabytes of copyrighted material—equivalent to millions of books, articles, and other creative works—to feed its artificial intelligence models. Allegedly, the employees handling AI training expressed discomfort with using copyrighted work, admitting that “torrenting from a corporate laptop [didn’t] feel right.” This one case – out of many – demonstrates the ethical gray area that the industry works in. This is not an accident. This is the strategy of the major AI companies.

The violation goes beyond copyright infringement. AI companies are explicitly positioning their products as replacements for human workers, using stolen creative works to train systems that will eliminate creative jobs. In the visual arts industry, AI-generated images now directly compete with human artists, flooding stock photo sites and freelance marketplaces with cheap alternatives. These aren’t complementary tools that enhance human creativity. Instead, they function as economic substitutes, systematically pushing human workers out of their livelihoods. We’ve seen evidence of job losses and pay cuts across creative sectors, affecting freelancers and digital artists. Writers are finding themselves competing with ChatGPT for content assignments. Illustrators are losing commissions to Midjourney and DALL-E. The irony is crushing: artists and writers whose work trained these systems are now finding themselves replaced by digital ghosts of their own creativity, receiving neither compensation nor credit for their contributions.

Besides the economic concern, these actions strike at fundamental questions about fairness and what makes us uniquely human: our creativity. When AI companies scrape decades of human creative output without permission or payment, they’re essentially claiming that intellectual property rights don’t apply to them. They’ve appointed themselves exempt from the rules that govern every other industry, building billion-dollar valuations on the labor of millions of creators who will never see a dime of that profit.

Public sentiment suggests Americans recognize the injustice of AI systems. Polling shows that nearly twice as many Americans believe AI will harm rather than benefit them—a remarkable level of skepticism revealing the truth about our fellow patriots. This public wariness creates the opportunity for meaningful pushback. We need robust accountability measures and transparency requirements for AI training data. Companies should disclose what content they’ve used, obtain proper licenses, and compensate creators fairly. Just as we don’t allow pharmaceutical companies to skip drug trials or automakers to ignore safety standards, we shouldn’t permit AI companies to build their empires on stolen content.

We stand at a crossroads similar to inflection points in other industries. The airline industry faced choices about safety guidelines, and we chose protection over profit. The pharmaceutical industry faced questions about drug pricing and access – now, ongoing battles continue to shape that landscape. Just like these other industries, the AI industry is facing its reckoning. We can allow these companies to continue to strip artists and creatives of their work. Or we can demand change, including transparent practices and honor for the human creativity that makes AI possible.