Mining of authors’ work is nothing new – AI is just doing what creative humans do | Letter

Authors say they are angry that Meta has used their material to train its artificial intelligence (Authors call for UK government to hold Meta accountable for copyright infringement, 31 March). But hasn’t that been going on for thousands of years? Isn’t all human thought an iteration of what has gone before? Artists and scientists have been mining the work of others for generations; that’s how human thought evolves.

Ian McEwan was influenced by LP Hartley’s The Go-Between. George…