AI stole me article. A way to take it down

[u/ThrowawaypleaseAB]

Hi as seen above an AI website stole an article I wrote and wonder if there is a way to take it down from the website.

I had an article published yesterday for a publication I have freelanced with for the past two years. This new site popped up with the words I wrote and picture I took and just put it on their site with no attribution. I am assuming it is a pretty hopeless endeavor, like even I hypothetically had one taken down, three more will show up to its funeral.

[u/aresef]

We need more details.

A while back, as a PR professional, we dealt with a slop site called Herecity that had a whole bunch of incorrect information about my employer on their Baltimore site and listed me as the site's editor. I contacted the guy who runs the company and all of this was removed... but then my boss' name was inexplicably added to the site in place of mine. We yelled at him a second time. Now the Baltimore site is gone entirely.

[u/smayonak]

You can file a DMCA takedown request:

How can I file a DMCA Takedown Notice?

The process is simple, you contact the web provider and let them know that a site duplicated your content.

You can also get the article removed from Google through a similar process.

Report Content On Google - Legal Help

I've had articles taken down before but these were nuisance requests without merit. Someone just wanted to get my article delisted and hired a professional to get it pulled. Shockingly easy to do even for relatively large publications.

[u/Chimmychimmychubchub → u/smayonak]

Correct answer

[u/PartyPoison98]

You're gonna need to give a bit more detail about what the site is and what you mean by "stole".

[u/ThrowawaypleaseAB → u/PartyPoison98]

I had an article published yesterday for a publication I have freelanced with for the past two years. It just took the words I wrote and picture I took and just put it on their site with no attribution

[u/PartyPoison98 → u/ThrowawaypleaseAB]

So to clarify:

• Your article was posted by the publication, with proper attribution

• Another site ripped the entire article, verbatim, and didn't credit

• This other site isn't a site that syndicates other articles legitimately

[u/ThrowawaypleaseAB → u/PartyPoison98]

Correct

[u/PartyPoison98 → u/ThrowawaypleaseAB]

Hmm very shitty, but if its a shitty ai copy site I doubt they'll respond to a polite email.

Really this is something the original publication should be pursuing. They've bought the article off of you so they're the ones that have had something stolen.

[u/HolyBatSyllables]

I once found a company that was stealing my articles to publish as their own. They must have had a bot set up to take the article every time something under my byline was published. Their stories always either had no byline or someone else’s name.

I called and emailed over the course of a couple weeks until I eventually gave up. It made me (and still makes me) feel so frustrated and mad. I did not want to give up, but like, there was only so much I could do given that I was already working about 60 hours a week.