Poetry Foundation Library Scraped for AI-Generated…
Poet Kyle Dargan discovered his copyrighted work being used without authorization on an AI-generated educational website called Giggle Academy
- Incident date
- Jul 2026
- Target
- Kyle Dargan
In July 2026, poet Kyle Dargan discovered that several of his copyrighted poems were being used without permission on Giggle Academy, an educational website founded by Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao. The platform, which claims to serve one million users, utilized scraped content to populate pages with AI-generated discussion questions, bio blurbs, and cartoonish illustrations.
What happened
Dargan identified four of his poems on the site, which he believes were scraped from the Poetry Foundation library. The unauthorized content included a poem about the history of lynching, which the site inaccurately labeled for children aged 2–8 and paired with imagery of smiling, personified U.S. states. Beyond poetry, the site also featured AI-generated versions of popular children’s books and illustrated storybooks based on Disney films.
After Dargan alerted his publishers, University of Georgia Press and Northwestern University Press, both organizations contacted Giggle Academy to demand the removal of the content. A Giggle Academy representative claimed the platform aims to follow fair use principles and apologized for the oversight. While the four pages featuring Dargan's work were removed, hundreds of other poems—reportedly also scraped from the Poetry Foundation—remained on the site as of late July. University of Georgia Press director Lisa Bayer noted that the site lacks human curation, and Northwestern University Press stated they would not authorize the use of their authors' work for AI-generated material. The incident has raised significant concerns regarding the lack of guardrails for copyrighted material used in automated educational platforms.