• More than 8 000 authors have signed an open letter regarding generative AI training and how it infringes copyright.
• The likes of Margaret Atwood and Michael Chabon are calling on OpenAI and others to gain consent and fairly compensate authors for accessing their content.
• The Authors Guild’s Open Letter to Generative AI Leaders is looking for more signatures.

While generative AI platforms are seemingly the only thing that technology companies can think about at the moment, for creators of original work it poses a real risk, especially when it comes to copyright and ownership. This is particularly important when it comes to AI training of these generative platforms, many of which scrap the internet in order to learn.

Now a large number of published authors have voiced similar concerns, penning an open letter to the likes of OpenAI, Alphabet (which owns Google), Meta, IBM, and Microsoft, asking their leaders to adopt new policies that seek to gain consent to access their work.

“Generative AI technologies built on large language models owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style, and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” the open letter from the Author’s Guild explained.

“You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited,” it added.

The Guild is looking at three aspects specifically, when it comes to AI training in relation to their work.

“We ask you, the leaders of AI, to mitigate the damage to our profession by taking the following steps:

1. Obtain permission for use of our copyrighted material in your generative AI programs.

2. Compensate writers fairly for the past and ongoing use of our works in your generative AI programs.

3. Compensate writers fairly for the use of our works in AI output, whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.

We hope you will appreciate the gravity of our concerns and that you will work with us to ensure, in the years to come, a healthy ecosystem for authors and journalists,” it outlines.

Whether these requests will be heard or fall on deaf ears remains to be seen, but this is not the first time that responsible practices when it comes to generative AI and the training thereof has been trumpeted. In fact, earlier this year, several industry players raised similar concerns, including OpenAI and Google.

As more developments in this sector happen at a rapid pace, however, it looks like those concerns were only raised for optics, and not genuine in nature.

Either way, content creators, regardless of their field, are growing concerned with how generative AI is developing.

[Image – Photo by Thom Milkovic on Unsplash]