Art of the Steal: Trump’s Big Tech Feud Could Cost Zuckerberg AI Books – Or Bucks
(AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
The rift between President Donald Trump and the technology sector geeks and gurus the media collectively refer to as the “tech bros” may be even bigger than it seems, and potentially about to expand.
Trump, obviously, is famous for protecting his brand. His name has been slapped on buildings, books, steaks, vodka, an airline, a board game, a reality show, and eventually the U.S. presidency itself. He’s his own most valued commodity, and one thing he absolutely does not do is give it away for free.
So it might not be sitting too well with Trump and his loyalists that Meta and on-again-off-again MAGA pariah Mark Zuckerberg have been quietly feeding Trump’s own mega-best-seller “The Art of the Deal” — along with books by Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. — into its AI model, LLaMA, allegedly without paying a dime.
According to a lawsuit filed earlier this year by author Richard Kadrey, Meta trained LLaMA on a massive trove of copyrighted books, including Trump’s. The company admitted the dataset in question contained more than 190,000 books. That includes “The Art of the Deal”, translations of it, and the literary works of Trump’s children. It’s dubious whether the use of the books constitutes “fair use,” since Llama is a for-profit venture.
Meanwhile, the administration is finalizing its AI Action Plan, a roadmap that could shape how the government treats Big Tech in the coming years. Some MAGA activists say the plan is shaping up to be a gift to Silicon Valley — right as Big Tech stands accused of monetizing Trump’s own words without paying for them. Imagine AI churning out Trumpish articles and term papers, minus the gold-plated branding at the top of every page? Yikes.
The ironies here are thick enough to train a large language model on. Trump is notorious for punishing anyone he thinks is ripping him off. And in recent weeks, he’s signaled growing antagonism toward the tech industry. The headline drama of course is the bitter feud with ultra tech nerd and AI pitchman Elon Musk, which included tanking the NASA nomination of Musk’s fellow billionaire tech bro Jared Isaacman. But wait, there’s more!
Before the falling out, the administration fired Copyright Office chief Shira Perlmutter back in May, a firing that resulted in a lawsuit and is still causing the administration headaches in just the past week. That firing is now seen in retrospect as having been a possible “power play” by Musk and White House A.I. & Crypto Czar David Sacks, meant to eliminate any resistance to AI companies using copyrighted material to train models without having to pay for it.
But Paul Perkins, who will now theoretically take over the job, is seen as unfriendly to Big Tech. And just after the firing, Republican Rep. Mike Davis posted a link to a CBS News story about the firing on Truth Social, and commented, “Now tech bros are going to attempt to steal creators’ copyrights for AI profits. This is 100% unacceptable.”
Intriguingly, Trump re-posted that on his Truth Social. Considering the timing, it was surely a sign of the break-up getting underway.
And on Sunday, Musk renewed his attacks on Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.
If you’re Zuckerberg, the drama is not what you want when you’re hoping for a friendly regulatory environment or free stuff. He’s got to be worried, million dollar donation to Trump’s second inauguration or not.
Trump built his empire on licensing himself. Now Meta is allegedly doing the same — but without cutting him a check. For a guy who wanted a cut of the campaign funds from candidates in his own party using his name on the stump – well it’s hard to imagine he’s going to be down with that, no matter how bad we need to beat China in the AI “space race.” And we definitely, badly, do need to.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
