Author Petition Publisher to Reduce AI Use: NPR

A group of over 70 authors, including Dennis Lehane, Gregory Maguire and Lauren Groff, released an open letter on Friday regarding the use of AI on the literary website Lit Hub. I asked the publisher to promise that they would never release a machine-created book.

Addressed to the US publishers of “Big Five,” including Penguin, Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachet Book Group and Macmillan, “other American publishers,” have escorted more than 1,100 signatures in a petition accompanying it within 24 hours. Among the well-known signatories after the release of the letter were Jodie Picoll, Olivie Blake and Paul Tremblay.

The letter includes a list of direct requests to publishers about the wide range of methods that AI may already be used in public. We ask that we refrain from publishing books written using AI tools built on copyrighted content without author consent or compensation, and not replacing publisher employees with AI tools, either entirely or partially, and refrain from hiring only human audiobook narrators, among other requests.

“The text produced by AI feels cheap because it is cheap. It feels easy because it is easy to produce. That's the overall point,” the letter states. “AI is a very powerful tool and has the capacity to stay here to be a real social benefit, but the replacement of art and artists is not one of them.”

Litigation – Focus – Until now

Until now, authors have primarily expressed their dissatisfaction with the negative impact on AI's work by launching litigation against AI companies rather than directly addressing publishers. Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Chabon, Junot Díaz, and comedian Sarah Silverman are one of the biggest names involved in ongoing copyright infringement cases against AI players.

Some of these cases have already begun to file awards. Earlier this week, a federal judge who primarily sided two such cases would support the AI ​​and meta of the accused human race, and could grant AI companies legal rights under the doctrine of fair use.

Young Adult Fiction author Rioghnach Robinson, in the name of the pen, Riley Redgate, was one of the organizers of letters and petitions, saying these rulings only felt the need for protection more urgently.

“In courts that allow AI to access copyrighted texts as fair use, the next and perhaps the last line of defense must be the publisher,” she said. “If publishers don't pledge that they won't generate competitive titles internally, there's nothing to stop publishers from generating authors. Publishers want to act in protecting authors and industrial workers, particularly from the competitive labor-related threats of AI.”

Existential threat

The author said that the “existential threat” of AI is not just copyright infringement. Copycat books, believed to have been written by AI, are attached to actual authors who have not written that they have grown on Amazon or other platforms in recent years.

The rise of AI audio production within publishing is another major threat addressed in letters. Many authors make extra money to tell their books. And the rise of machine narration and translation is even greater concern for human voice actors and translators. For example, Major Audio Books Publisher Audible recently announced a partnership with publishers to expand its offering of AI narration and translation.

“Audible believes that AI represents an important opportunity to expand the availability of audiobooks using its vision of being offered to customers in every book in every language. “We can bring more stories back to life. We will help creators reach new audiences while still allowing listeners around the world to access extraordinary books that are hard to hear.”

Robinson acknowledged the measures the publishers took to help protect writers.

“A lot of individual contracts now have an AI opt-out clause that tries to lock out books from the AI ​​training dataset, which is great,” Robinson pointed out. But she said publishers should do more to protect writers from the onslaught of AI. “There is a great concern that publishers may either engulf the publishing landscape or create their own generative AI titles that can replace editors with AI tools and more,” she said.

NPR reached out to all five publishers mentioned in the letter and received one response ahead of the publication deadline.

“Simon and Schuster take these concerns seriously,” spokesman Susanna Lawrence said in a statement. “We are actively working to protect the author's intellectual property rights.”