Chapter 156: Six Hundred Thousand Works

Chapter 156: Chapter 156: Six Hundred Thousand Works

The scope of the problem became clear on a Wednesday afternoon, and the number Nakamura read aloud made the entire conference room go silent in a way Haruki hadn’t experienced since the day Suzune first confirmed the Horizon retention clause’s actual reach.

"Six hundred thousand," Nakamura said again, apparently needing to repeat it himself before the figure fully registered. "Our forensic analysis team estimates at least six hundred thousand individual creative works were scraped and incorporated into training data across just the three platforms we’ve managed to investigate so far."

"Six hundred thousand," Haruki repeated, the number refusing to settle into something his mind could properly grasp. "That’s not a company doing something wrong. That’s an entire industry practice."

"It appears that way," Nakamura confirmed grimly. "And unlike Horizon or Ariadne, this isn’t hidden behind shell companies and deliberately obscured ownership structures. It’s happening in plain sight, technically disclosed in terms-of-service documents nobody reasonably reads in full, defended publicly by executives who genuinely seem to believe they’re doing nothing wrong."

Rika pulled up a recent interview on the shared screen — the CEO of Meridian AI, the company whose demo had first exposed the issue, speaking confidently to a technology journalist about "democratizing creative tools" and "advancing human creativity through responsible innovation."

"He actually believes this," Rika said, disgust evident in her voice. "That’s almost more frustrating than if he were simply lying."

"Belief doesn’t excuse harm," Watanabe’s replacement lawyer, a sharp young associate named Fujii who’d taken over much of the firm’s Lantern Project work after Watanabe’s earlier revelation about her father, said pointedly. "But it does mean our usual approach of exposing hidden malice won’t work the same way here. This requires demonstrating harm to a public that’s largely enthusiastic about the technology itself."

That afternoon, Haruki attempted direct contact with Meridian AI’s legal department, requesting a meeting to discuss the scraped works and potential compensation for affected creators. The response arrived within an hour, polished and professionally dismissive in exactly the way he’d learned to recognize from years of similar corporate correspondence.

*Meridian AI’s training practices comply fully with all applicable terms-of-service agreements and current legal frameworks. We remain committed to responsible AI development and welcome continued dialogue with the creative community.*

"Translation," Suzune said, reading over his shoulder, "we did nothing wrong, please stop asking, and also we’re aware public sentiment might eventually turn against us so we’re keeping the door technically open."

The public response, when word of the coalition’s investigation eventually leaked, proved considerably more complicated than any previous fight had generated. Half of social media rallied immediately behind affected creators, sharing examples of AI outputs that clearly, unmistakably replicated distinctive artistic styles without permission or compensation. The other half argued, sometimes reasonably and sometimes with genuine hostility, that creative work had always built upon previous influences, that AI training represented simply an accelerated version of the same natural creative evolution, that creators like Haruki were simply afraid of technological progress threatening their established position.

"This is exhausting in a completely different way than fighting Horizon was," Haruki admitted to Yui during their nightly call, rubbing his temples against the beginning of what felt like a permanent headache. "At least when we fought predatory contracts, almost nobody publicly defended the predatory practice itself. This time, half the internet thinks we’re the villains for objecting."

"That’s genuinely harder," Yui agreed. "But it doesn’t make you wrong. It just means the fight requires more patience explaining why it matters, instead of simply exposing something everyone already agrees is bad."

Three days later, the situation escalated considerably when Meridian AI’s CEO addressed the controversy directly during a widely watched technology conference keynote, specifically naming the Lantern Project and, more pointedly, Haruki personally.

"Some voices in the creative community," the CEO said, his tone carrying carefully practiced reasonableness, "prefer fighting inevitable technological progress rather than adapting to it. I understand the fear. Change is always frightening. But history shows us that resisting genuine innovation rarely serves anyone well in the long run, including the very people doing the resisting."

Haruki watched the clip that evening, feeling the familiar, uncomfortable sensation of becoming a public target again, this time for a considerably more ambiguous cause than exposing clear-cut predatory contracts.

"He’s framing this as fear of progress," Sora said during the coalition’s emergency call that evening. "That’s smart, honestly. It sidesteps the actual consent issue entirely and makes you look like a reactionary luddite instead of someone raising a legitimate concern."

"So how do we reframe it back?" Hayato asked.

Haruki considered the question carefully, thinking through everything he’d learned over years of exactly this kind of public battle. "We stop talking about AI as a concept entirely. We stop debating progress versus tradition. We focus entirely, specifically, on consent. Six hundred thousand individual creators, most of whom never knowingly agreed to have their work used this way, deserve a straightforward answer to one simple question: were they properly informed, and were they compensated?"

"That’s a narrower argument," Fujii said, considering it. "But narrower might actually be stronger here. Harder to argue against directly."

"Exactly," Haruki said. "This was never actually about opposing AI technology itself. It’s about the same thing every fight we’ve had has actually been about. Whether powerful institutions get to exploit people who lack the resources to protect themselves, buried under language deliberately designed to obscure what’s actually happening."

The coalition spent the following week refining exactly this message — carefully avoiding the broader, more divisive debate about AI’s role in creative industries, focusing entirely on documented cases of specific creators whose distinctive work had been demonstrably used without consent or compensation. Fujimori Aya’s old lesson, relayed secondhand through years of coalition institutional memory, proved unexpectedly relevant: focus on the pattern, not the ideology.

By the following Monday, three additional creators had come forward independently, each with documented evidence of their specific work appearing in AI-generated outputs. A journalist at a major technology publication, initially skeptical of the coalition’s claims, published a detailed investigative piece after reviewing the accumulated evidence, concluding unambiguously that Meridian AI’s practices, whatever their broader technological merit, had clearly failed to obtain meaningful consent from the actual creators whose work made the technology function at all.

That evening, Haruki sat with Yui on their apartment balcony, watching evening settle over Tokyo, the day’s exhausting developments finally allowing a moment of quiet reflection.

"Do you think this one will take as long as the last fight did?" Yui asked.

"I genuinely don’t know," Haruki admitted. "This territory’s different enough that I can’t predict the timeline the way I could with contracts and legal precedent I already understood intimately."

"But you’re not backing down."

"No," he confirmed, watching the city lights flicker on across the darkening skyline. "Six hundred thousand creators didn’t consent to this. That number alone means we keep going, regardless of how long it takes or how complicated the public conversation gets around it."

Yui squeezed his hand gently, and they sat together in comfortable silence as evening fully settled over the city, the next difficult stretch of work waiting patiently ahead, exactly the way every previous fight worth having had always waited, demanding nothing more and nothing less than the same stubborn, patient honesty that had carried Haruki through every difficult Chapter of his career so far.