July 19 (UPI) — In a show of solidarity and protest, renowned authors such as James Patterson and Margaret Atwood, along with over 9,000 writers, have signed an open letter sent by the Authors Guild to executives leading the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
The extensive list of signatories includes household names in literature like Dan Brown, Jennifer Egan, David Baldacci, Michael Chabon, Nora Roberts, Jodi Picoult, Suzanne Collins, Jonathan Franzen, and Celeste Ng.
The letter references the recent Supreme Court ruling in Warhol v. Goldsmith, which the Authors Guild believes undermines the fair use arguments put forth by AI companies. The court rejected those arguments, stating that they cannot be used as a valid defense when AI technology creates commercial substitutes for the original works.
The Authors Guild calls for AI developers to seek permission for the use of copyrighted material in training large language models and to fairly compensate writers for their contributions.
“We, the undersigned, draw attention to the inherent injustice of exploiting our works as part of your AI systems without our consent, credit, or compensation,” states the letter.
“Generative AI technologies, built on large language models, owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and reproduce our language, stories, style, and ideas.”
The letter was addressed to executives at IBM, Microsoft, OpenAI, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Facebook (the parent company of Meta), and Stability AI, the makers of Stable Diffusion.
This open letter was prompted by the increasing popularity and accessibility of AI-based products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, as well as platforms such as Sudowrite and Rytr, which enable users to generate entire books using AI technologies.
Sudowrite boldly proclaims on its website, “You could rewrite the same sentence 100 times… or you could make the computer do it.”
Journalist Adi Robertson of The Verge recently shared her experience of using Sudowrite to produce an entire novella over just one weekend. Wired reported on another novella, authored by Stephen Marche using AI tools, describing it as “required reading” for aspiring users of similar technologies.
However, concerns have been raised about the impact of AI-generated books flooding the market. Lifewire cautioned that AI is producing books at a faster rate than human writers, which could potentially overwhelm the traditional writing industry. In February, it was discovered that over 200 e-books on Amazon’s Kind store listed ChatGPT as either the sole author or a co-author.
The Authors Guild echoes these concerns, warning of an influx of “mediocre, machine-written books.”
“The output of AI will always be derivative in nature,” stated Maya Shanbhag Lang, President of the Authors Guild, in a recent statement.
“AI regurgitates what it takes in, which consists of the work of human writers. It is only fair that authors be compensated for the role they play in ‘feeding’ AI and continually shaping its evolution. Our work should not be used without consent, credit, and compensation. All three are essential.”
The Authors Guild highlights the fact that authors have experienced a 40% decline in income over the past decade, with full-time writers earning a median writing-related income of just $23,330 in 2022.
“If creators are not fairly compensated, they cannot afford to create,” remarked Nora Roberts in a statement. She emphasized, “Human beings create and write stories that human beings read. We are not robots to be programmed, and AI cannot create human stories without drawing from the existing body of human-written work.”
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