New book 'Dealers de mots' traces 20 years of linguistic capitalism
frederickaplan · x · 2026-09-03
Frederickaplan's new book "Dealers de mots" (Actes Sud) is out. It argues that the words produced by AI tools are "stolen" — collected, analyzed, and modeled from millions of pages of previously written text, accumulated as capital by companies and resold as services.
The book traces how "linguistic capitalism" was built over twenty years, from the earliest auctions on words to giant language models.
Related event: New French Book Examines Two Decades of 'Language Capitalism'(2 posts)→
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