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Pearson has already sent out a cease-and-desist letter over use of its intellectual property:
Textbooks giant Pearson is currently taking legal action over the use of its intellectual property to train AI models, chief executive Andy Bird revealed today as the firm laid out its plans for its own artificial intelligence-powered products.
The firm laid out its plans on how it would use AI a week after its share price tumbled by 15% as American rival Chegg said its own business had been hurt by the rise of ChatGPT.
Those plans would include AI-powered summaries of Pearson educational videos, to be rolled out this month for Pearson+ members, as well as AI-generated multiple choice questions for areas where a student might need more help.
Bird said Pearson had an advantage as its AI products would use Pearson content for training, which he said would make it more reliable.
[...] Bird also said it was usually easy to tell what a large language model such as ChatGPT has been trained on, because "you can ask it".
Bird also sought to point out a difference between Pearson and Chegg, which focuses more on homework assistance.
"They are in a very different business to us," he said. "We see a great differentiator between what Chegg are offering and what Pearson+ are offering.
"We're in the business of helping you learn and improve your skills, not in the business of answering."
He added that - as Pearson was in the business of learning - its products would be hard to replace.
"If all we had to do was read a set of facts in order to learn, there'd be no need for schools, colleges and teachers."
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday May 12, @02:02AM
I went in the late 80s and early 90s. Textbooks were expensive but by no means 2/3 of the cost. The book store would buy them back for 10% and sell them at something like 80% of new when used. It was a minor league grift compared to now. They hadn't invented Internet lock-ins yet. Listen to what the kids are saying, however bad your 80s/90s textbook experience, theirs is almost certainly worse. Of course the weaponization of online courseware pales in comparison to the financial WMDs that student loans are. We generally didn't have those either, and tuition was lower because the colleges knew that most students weren't taking out loans. Once financing becomes the norm in any business, costs always rise and the pay-as-you-go customer gets screwed because it's no longer "What can you afford", it's now "What payment can you afford", and when that payment is delayed, Whoooah, boy. No wonder it's so obscene. As unfair as it seems to let some of those loans go, the more I think about it the more I lean towards saying that it serves the bond holders right if they have to take pennies back on the dollar. These were predatory loans. Thing is, a good chunk of them are held by the government. Yes. We the People. We did it to ourselves. Stop hitting ourselves. Why are you hitting yourself? Hey look, there's something on your shirt...
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