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Penguin Random House has begun adding a specific warning to the copyright pages of new books and reprints: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.”
The change was reported by The Bookseller on October 18, 2024, and by TechCrunch on October 19, 2024. It is a visible reservation of rights—not a technical system that stops a company from copying or scraping a book.
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What Penguin Random House changed
The new sentence appears alongside the ordinary copyright notice in some Penguin Random House and Penguin Books editions. The standard notice identifies the copyright owner and restricts unauthorized reproduction. The added sentence addresses a newer dispute directly: whether copyrighted books may be copied into datasets used to train generative-AI systems.
Contemporary reporting described the rollout as applying to newly published books and reprints of older titles. Official Penguin Books sample PDFs show the wording in 2025 material, including editions of Odyssey by Stephen Fry and Brave New Words by Salman Khan:
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“No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems.”
The exact implementation should not be treated as universal. Copyright pages can differ by imprint, territory, format, publication date and rights history. The verified examples are Penguin Books UK materials; they do not establish that every Penguin Random House title, US edition, ebook, audiobook or international edition carries identical language.
What the wording means
The notice targets use or reproduction of the work for the purpose of training AI technologies or systems. That is narrower than a ban on every use involving software or artificial intelligence.
- Training: copying or ingesting text into material used to develop or improve an AI model is the central concern.
- Text-and-data mining: automated analysis of large bodies of text may fall under specific legal rules, depending on the jurisdiction and purpose.
- Searching or indexing: the copyright-page sentence does not automatically answer whether every search, index or database use is prohibited.
- Reader use: asking an AI tool to summarize a lawfully obtained chapter is not automatically the same activity as adding the book to a model-training dataset. The legal answer can depend on what is copied, how it is processed and the law that applies.
- AI output: whether a generated answer reproduces protected passages or imitates protected expression is a separate question from how a model was trained.
Quoting a book in a review or news report, licensing excerpts for research, and making a private copy can also involve different legal rules. The warning should not be expanded into a blanket prohibition on ordinary reading, criticism, research or every machine-readable use.
Why the EU legal reference matters
Official Penguin Books sample copyright pages also say that Penguin Random House expressly reserves the work from the text-and-data-mining exception under Article 4(3) of the EU Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790.
That reference is important because the EU framework permits certain text-and-data-mining activities while allowing rights holders to reserve their rights in specified circumstances. The printed statement is therefore particularly intelligible in the context of European editions and European text-and-data-mining law.
It is not, however, a court ruling. Its consequences depend on the country, the type of mining, the technical method used to communicate the reservation, other applicable exceptions and the facts of any dispute. The EU reference should not be assumed to control a US edition or settle questions about US fair use, temporary copies, public-domain material or particular AI-training practices.
Does the warning stop AI companies?
No—not technically. Nothing in the evidence indicates that the printed sentence encrypts a book, prevents scanning, blocks scraping or automatically excludes the text from a dataset. A company that can access a copy may still be able to copy or process it.
The practical value is different. The notice can:
- make PRH’s position unambiguous;
- provide evidence that the rightsholder did not authorize the stated use;
- help support an enforcement argument or a licensing negotiation;
- distinguish an explicit reservation from a silent or ambiguous copyright page; and
- signal to authors, researchers and the publishing industry that AI training is being treated as a rights issue.
Those are likely functions of the language, rather than a confirmed description of a particular PRH enforcement program. The notice does not automatically prove infringement or make all AI training unlawful in every country.
PRH is not rejecting artificial intelligence altogether
The copyright-page warning concerns unauthorized use of PRH content for AI training. It does not represent a total corporate ban on AI.
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In an August 8, 2024 statement, Penguin Random House UK said it champions human creativity, will defend the intellectual property of authors and artists, and may use generative-AI tools “selectively and responsibly” where they advance the company’s goals. It also said every PRH book would remain shaped by human teams.
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The distinction is straightforward: PRH is asserting control over the use of its copyrighted books while reserving the option to use selected AI tools in its own operations. That policy does not by itself establish that PRH’s internal uses are equivalent to training an external model on unauthorized books.
What it means for authors
A copyright-page notice is issued at the publisher level, but it does not reveal the complete allocation of rights between a publisher and an author. Contracts may divide legal ownership, beneficial interests, licensing authority and subsidiary rights in different ways.
PRH’s January 12, 2026 FAQ concerning the Anthropic copyright settlement illustrates that distinction. PRH says that, in many cases, the publisher is the legal owner while the author is the beneficial owner, and that both may be separate class members able to submit claims for an eligible work.
That context makes the warning relevant to authors, but it does not replace a publishing agreement. Authors should check their contracts for provisions covering AI, licensing, text-and-data mining, derivative uses and subsidiary rights. The printed sentence alone cannot establish who controls every relevant claim or who would receive any resulting payment.
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Not every book distributed by PRH is necessarily a PRH rights work
Penguin Random House’s permissions portal explains that PRH distributes books for various publishers and that permission to reprint those works must be obtained from the actual publisher. Distribution and rights ownership are therefore not interchangeable.
A book sold through PRH’s distribution network should not automatically be assumed to be covered by a PRH copyright-page policy. For permissions or rights questions, identify the publisher named in the book and consult the relevant rights holder.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How widespread is the warning?
Verified examples include 2025 Penguin Books editions of Odyssey and Brave New Words, as well as other Penguin Books and Puffin sample materials containing materially similar language:
- Odyssey sample PDF
- Brave New Words sample PDF
- Additional Penguin Books sample
- Additional Puffin sample
These examples confirm real use in particular editions. They do not prove that every PRH imprint or format has adopted the sentence. A 2024 hardcover, a 2025 paperback, an ebook, an audiobook and a foreign-language edition may each have different copyright information.
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What the policy could mean for publishing
Publishers are increasingly being asked to state whether their catalogs may be used to train AI systems. Explicit notices could make rights reservations easier to identify and could strengthen pressure for transparent licensing markets.
They may also create practical complications. Researchers, libraries and accessibility projects can have legitimate reasons to analyze or transform text, and their legal position may differ from that of a commercial AI developer training a general-purpose model. A copyright-page statement cannot by itself resolve those competing interests.
Nor does it answer whether a particular model trained on a particular book, whether a copy was lawfully obtained, or whether a generated output unlawfully reproduces protected expression. Those questions require evidence about the system and analysis under the relevant law.
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How to read the warning accurately
- Identify the edition: note the imprint, format, territory and publication or reprint year.
- Read the complete copyright page: look for the AI-training sentence and any text-and-data-mining reservation.
- Separate notice from ownership: check the named publisher and remember that author and publisher interests may differ.
- Separate training from output: a dispute over model training is not automatically a dispute over a model’s response.
- Get legal advice for a specific project: research, library, commercial and personal uses can raise different issues, and contract terms may matter.
For rights requests involving PRH publications, the publisher directs users to its permissions portal. Eligible authors and rightsholders involved in the Anthropic matter should use the official PRH settlement information and the administrator’s claims website, rather than treating the copyright-page warning as a substitute for a claim or legal advice.
The Bottom Line
Bottom line: Penguin Random House has added an explicit AI-training rights warning to real new and reprinted editions, including verified 2025 Penguin Books materials. It is a public rights assertion and, in relevant EU editions, an attempted reservation from a text-and-data-mining exception—not a technical shield or a universal ruling that all AI training is illegal. Its effect depends on the edition, territory, use, rights ownership and enforcement. PRH’s position is against unauthorized training on its books, not against every use of AI.
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