The generative AI transforms the publishing industry. The authors repel on a variety of fronts, more recently with an open letter to publishers asking them to reduce their use of technology. (Getty Stock Photo.)
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A group of more than 70 authors, including Dennis Lehane, Gregory Maguire and Lauren Groff open letter Friday about the use of AI on the literary site of the Lit Hub site. He asked publishing houses to promise “that they will never publish books created by machines”.
Address to American publishers “Big Five” – Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan – as well as “other America publishers”, the letter aroused more than 1,100 signatures on its functions support petition in less than 24 hours. Among the well -known signatories after the release of the letter are Jodi Picoult, Olivie Blake and Paul Tremblay.
The letter contains a list of direct requests to publishers concerning a wide range of ways that can already – or may soon be – used in the publication. He asks them to refrain from publishing written books using AI tools built on content protected by copyright without the consent or compensation of the authors, to refrain from replacing the employees of the publishing house entirely or partially with AI tools, and to hire only human audiob narrators – among other requests.
“The writing that AI produced feels inexpensive because it is cheap. It’s simple because it is simple to produce. It is interest,” says the letter. “AI is an extremely powerful tool, here to stay, with the capacity of real societal advantages – but the replacement of art and artists is not one of them.”
The continuation of prosecution has an orientation – so far
Until now, the authors have mainly expressed their dissatisfaction with the negative impacts of the AI on their work by launching prosecution against AI companies rather than attacking publishing houses directly. Ta-nehisi Coates, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz and the actress Sarah Silverman are among the biggest names involved in cases of copyright in progress against AI players.
Some of these cases are already starting to make the decisions: earlier this week, the federal judges presiding over two of these cases ruled in favor of anthropogenic defendants AI and META, potentially giving the companies of the legal law under the doctrine of fair use to train their models of important language on works protected by copyright – as long as they obtain copies of these work legally.
The author of the young adult fiction Riognach Robinson, which is called the name of the Riley Redgate pen, and is one of the organizers of the letter and the petition, said that these decisions only do the guarantees feel more urgent.
“The courts allowing access to AI to texts protected by copyright as a fair use, the following defense line-and perhaps the last-must be the publishers,” she said. “Without the publishers who do not commit to not generating competitive titles internally, nothing continues to publish the publishing houses of the A-generating their authors of existence. We hope that publishers will act to protect the authors and workers in the industry, in particular, the competitive threats and linked to the work of the AI.”
Existential threat
The authors said that the “existential threat” of AI is not only a question of copyright violation. Copycat’s books that seem to have been written by AI and are attached to real authors who have not written them have proliferated on Amazon and other platforms in recent years.
The rise of AI Audio production in edition is another great threat addressed in the letter. Many authors earn additional money to tell their own books. And the rise of the narration and translation of the machine is an even greater concern for the actors and translators of the human voice. For example, the recently audible audio book publisher recently announcement A partnership with publishers to extend the Narration and Translation offers of AI.
“Audible believes that AI represents an important opportunity to expand the availability of audio books with the vision of offering customers each book in each language, alongside our continuous investments in the premium original content,” said Audible CEO, Bob Carrigan, as part of the announcement. “We will be able to give life to more stories – help creators reach new audiences while ensuring that listeners around the world can access extraordinary books that could otherwise never reach their ears.”
Robinson recognized the measures that publishers have taken to help protect writers.
“Many individual contracts now have AI deactivation clauses to try to keep books out of AI training data sets, which is great,” said Robinson. But she said that publishers should do much more to defend their writers against AI assault. “There are important concerns that publishers could create their own generative AI titles that could swallow the landscape of publishing, or replace editorials with AI tools, or others,” she said.
NPR contacted the five publishing houses named in the letter and received an answer before the deadline for publication.
“Simon & Schuster takes these concerns seriously,” said spokeswoman Susannah Lawrence in a statement. “We are actively involved in the protection of the intellectual property rights of our authors.”
