Science fiction authors John Scalzi and Charles Stross have publicly condemned the impact of generative AI on writing, accusing AI companies of stealing copyrighted work and creating legal and reputational hazards for authors. Stross, who is party to a class-action settlement over Anthropic's alleged use of pirated ebooks to train its models, branded AI firms "absolute scum" for training systems that compete commercially with the very authors whose work they used without permission. The comments matter because they reflect growing anger within the publishing industry over AI's use of copyrighted material and the knock-on effects for writers' careers and reputations.

Stross also complained that his blog has been slowed by foreign botnets scraping data to train large language models, and argued AI firms are deliberately making their tools "addictive" to drive future revenue. Scalzi, known for the Old Man's War series and Redshirts, warned that publishers are increasingly wary of AI-generated prose due to copyright risk, which he said unfairly disadvantages new writers without a pre-ChatGPT body of work to prove originality. He also criticised Microsoft and Google for embedding AI writing tools into Word and Google Docs, and urged authors to avoid AI at every stage of the publishing process, including editing, art and translation.