Almost none of them say. Across the six agreements in our Publishing Database, only Kobo answers the question directly: its terms state that works will not be used to train generative AI. Amazon KDP, IngramSpark and Apple Books do not mention AI or machine learning at all. Draft2Digital and Google Play Books mention neither, but each grants a right broad enough to sit either side of the line. Silence is not an exclusion — it leaves the question to whatever licence you granted by uploading, and to policies that can change without amending the contract.
Kobo Writing Life is the exception. Training on uploaded work is excluded by the terms — Kobo agrees that works will not be used to train generative AI technologies. The same clause is open about what Kobo may still do with AI: read, analyse and process the work to categorise and tag it, judge whether it is suitable for sale, generate keywords and ad copy from it, and build recaps and accessibility features for readers who have bought it. That is a real set of permissions. It is also a different thing from training a model on the text, and the contract separates the two on purpose.
Amazon KDP — the Terms and Conditions do not address training machine-learning models on uploaded content anywhere. Not permitted, not excluded, not mentioned.
IngramSpark — the Global Print and Ebook Agreement is silent in the same way. The licence it grants is broader than the others reviewed, and the metadata rights outlive the agreement, but neither of those is an AI clause.
Apple Books — no mention either, and the most interesting silence of the six. Apple is appointed as your agent rather than taking a licence as a reseller, and what it may do is enumerated: sell the book, deliver previews, format and host the file, use your artwork for promotion with modification limited to resizing and cropping. Nothing in that list reads naturally as covering model training. Narrow is not the same as excluded, but it is a different starting position from a general-purpose grant.
Google Play Books — no mention of AI or training in either agreement, and yet the widest opening of the six. The publisher agreement authorises Google to use and make the content available "as part of and/or through the Google Services (or any of them)", and defines Google Services as any products, services or technology "provided by or being developed by" Google or its affiliates. A permission bounded by a definition that expressly reaches technology not yet built does not exclude much. Separately, Google's Book insights feature is a generative-AI companion that reads the book's text to answer readers' questions — Catalog › Advanced options › AI settings for the whole account, or Book info › Settings › Advanced settings per title turns it off, and note that it is on by default.
Draft2Digital — no mention of AI or machine learning either, but the terms do grant the right to use manuscript and work files "for the purpose of improving and enhancing our systems for converting and distributing" books. That clause is scoped by purpose rather than by technique, so it neither clearly includes nor clearly excludes model training.
A contract that says nothing about training has not promised you anything about training. What governs instead is the general licence you granted by uploading — which on every one of these platforms is broad enough to run a distribution business — plus whatever the company's current policy happens to be. Policies are not contract terms. They can be rewritten without your agreement and without notice, and the rewrite is lawful precisely because the agreement left the space empty.
This is why the answer here is different from the answer for books already published and scraped. That is a litigation question about work that has already left your hands. This one is about a document you sign before the file is ever uploaded, and it is the rare part of the problem where reading first actually changes the outcome.
Platforms increasingly run AI over catalogue content for categorisation, keyword generation, ad copy, recaps and accessibility. A company can do all of that and still not train a foundation model on your manuscript — and it can also do all of that while quietly reserving the right to. The two questions have to be asked separately, because a press release about one is routinely read as an answer to the other.
No — and it would be a poor reason to. An explicit exclusion is a genuine point in Kobo's favour and worth knowing about, but exclusivity, royalty basis, reach and payment terms all matter too, and no single clause settles where a book should be sold. Going wide means accepting several sets of terms at once and knowing which one is weakest, not finding the one perfect platform.
General information, not legal advice. Platform terms change; each assessment carries its own verification date. Verified 4 September 2026.