In that case I would say it is the act of reproducing the books that is illegal. Training the AI on said books is not.
So the illegality rests at the point of output and not at the point of input.
I’m just speaking in terms of the technical interpretation of what’s in place. My personal views on what it should be are another topic.
> So the illegality rests at the point of output and not at the point of input.
It's not as simple as that, as this settlement shows [1].
Also, generating output is what these models are primarily trained for.
[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y4jpg922qo