Member-only story
I Caught ChatGPT Stealing My Content!
Should you worry about AI training on your content?
I decided to find out by investigating my site. I spent years building a writing website called Become a Writer Today. I wrote and commissioned hundreds of articles about writing craft, book rounds, and general advice for writers. I netted a couple of million page views over the years.
After ChatGPT launched, my traffic dropped. But I spotted content from my articles showing up in ChatGPT, Claude, and other AI models.
So I asked ChatGPT directly: “Did you train on my site’s content?”
ChatGPT told me that “Become a Writer Today” was absolutely part of OpenAI’s training data. It had ingested my articles, studied the tone, structure, and style. My “legacy site” had indirectly shaped how AI answers writing-related queries.
That felt good for about five seconds. But I never gave OpenAI permission, and I certainly hadn’t received payment for years of work.
