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How to Protect Your Writing From AI Training

If you’re like most writers I know, AI’s impact on the arts, writing in particular, is of increasing concern. The writers I coach often ask about best practices to protect their writing from AI training.

AI is everywhere—consider the map apps, text editors, and chatbots that assist us. AI is on our phones, in our cars, and in our doctors’ offices. The more I educate myself, the more I appreciate the countless ways AI improves lives.

Likewise, the more I educate myself the more certain I am that those of us writing blog posts, books, and articles need to understand AI and take charge of protecting our material.

So much of the AI landscape is uncharted territory. But the more we know, the better able we are to protect our words.

What is AI Training?

You can think of AI training, also referred to as “AI scraping,” as the process of teaching a student—but instead of a person, you’re teaching a computer program. And, instead of textbooks, tech companies use massive amounts of content (like books, articles, websites, and social media posts) to teach their programs patterns in language and information.

Here’s a simple example: Imagine you want to teach an AI how to write like Ernest Hemingway. You’d feed it all of Hemingway’s books and stories. The AI would analyze how Hemingway:

Structures his sentences
Chooses his words
Develops his stories
Creates his unique style

Presto! Want to write like Hemingway? Now you (almost) can. I mean, not really . . . the notion that computers can adequately replicate the art of emotional resonance and the complexity of the human condition is a topic for another post!

How AI Training Impacts Writers

Companies are collecting all sorts of writing from across the internet to train their AIs, often without asking permission from us, the authors.

Your content may be used to teach AIs to:

Write in different styles
Answer questions
Generate content
Understand and respond to human requests

After studying all this content, the AI can try to mimic your style or use what it learned to generate similar writing.

Simple Ways to Protect Your Writing from AI Training

Many writers are spending a lot of time wringing their hands, feeling hopeless about all things AI. I get it. It’s a wild new world we’re living in, but we can adjust and even benefit from these tools once we educate ourselves.

How to Turn Off AI Training in Word

I used to feel confident advising the writers I work with to use Word. Actually, I still do. It’s the industry standard and by far the easiest format to share with other writers, editors, and beta readers.

But recently Microsoft Office has enabled an opt-out feature that must be turned on to avoid letting your Word and Excel documents train Microsoft’s AI systems. They don’t make this opt-out easy to find either!

Here’s what to do:

Visit File
Options
Trust Center
Trust Center Settings
Privacy Options
Privacy Settings
Optional Connected Experiences
Uncheck box: “Turn on optional connected experiences”

How to Turn Off AI Training in Google Docs

Google has repeatedly stated that they don’t scrape publicly shared documents, which is good news. But its privacy policy does nothing to assure users that it won’t change that policy down the road. To complicate matters, Google has relationships with third-parties that adhere to their own rules and regulations.

If you want to use Google Docs to write your book, this article is worth a read. Is Your Data Safe From Google Docs AI Scraping?

If You Have a Website

Think of this practice as putting up a “No Trespassing” sign, but for AI:

Ask your website designer (or if you use WordPress, try a plugin) to add this line to your site: Copy<meta name="robots" content="noai"> This tells AI companies, “Hey, hands off!”

Protect the Writing You Share Online

Mix It Up

Try sharing some writing as images instead of text
Break up your text with pictures or graphics
Use PDFs when possible (they’re harder for AI to grab)

Password Protection
If you’re sharing something special, consider putting it behind a password.

Legal Stuff

You don’t need a lawyer to implement these simple safeguards:

Keep Records

Save dated copies of your work
Screenshot where and when you publish
Keep any emails or messages about your writing

What About Social Media?

If you’re posting your work on social media, it’s tough to entirely eliminate the possibility it will be used for AI training. But you can:

Share snippets instead of full pieces
Post images of your text instead of typing it out
Link back to your protected website

When You Can’t Avoid AI

Sometimes, you just can’t avoid all contact with AI. That’s okay! Focus on protecting your most important work:

Published books
Paid content
Personal blogs
Professional articles

The Good News

More writers are speaking up about this issue. Companies and lawmakers are starting to listen. While we wait for better rules, these simple steps can help protect your work.

Quick Action Steps (Do These Today!)

Add that protection notice to your website
Start using PDFs for important documents
Put copyright notices on your work
Join writer communities to stay updated

Remember…

You don’t have to become a tech expert or hide all your writing in a bunker. Just taking a few basic steps can help protect your work from becoming AI training data.

The most important thing? Keep writing! Don’t let AI concerns stop you from sharing your voice with the world.