Angelina YangFounder and Host, TwoSetAI · AI builder for visibility and discoverability

Why AI Companies Would Rather Get Sued Than Pay for Books | Trip Adler, CEO @Created by Humans

29 Apr 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:37

Trip Adler argues AI companies prefer lawsuits to licensing because the legal gray area resembles Napster before iTunes. He says the industry needs a legitimate platform for licensing books, not the current unlicensed training that companies claim is fair use.

Napster was also kind of legally gray area, right? And the answer to that was iTunes and Spotify, which is like building out the right legitimate model. So that's what we're trying to do. We're building out the iTunes and the Spotify of this space so that people don't even want to use the Napster anymore. They want to just do the legit version.
Trading a lawfully purchased book is fair use. It's only the pirated copies that were infringements. Patreon CEO called the fair use argument a bogus excuse, right?
First emotion is confusion about what's going on. I feel a little sad that there's so much confusion, so much conflict, because I feel like we should just build out solutions that work for everyone. Can you tell me what I am optimist. I don't think every AI company is jumping to license these books. Are you thinking about starting this company? Are we going to be competitors?
How did you keep yourself and your team motivated? Because you don't know, right?
It's just blind faith. You just gotta believe and go for it. I think just, you know, blind faith. You just believe in yourself and you just go for it, and eventually it works.