European trade bodies call for AI transparency

Three trade bodies for writers, publishers and booksellers across Europe are urging for “decisive action” to ensure the transparency of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The European Writers’ Council (EWC), the Federation of European Publishers (FEP) and the European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBF) are calling for legislation to make AI safer for citizens in Europe, timing their announcement to take place during the annual Frankfurt Book Fair.

The organisations said: “Generative AI models have been developed in an opaque and unfair way, illegally making use of millions of copyright-protected books without permission from authors or publishers.

“This practice impacts negatively not only rightsholders, but also democracy itself, by facilitating the mass creation of misleading, biased and even dangerous content which has the potential to undermine European democracy. Transparency is therefore essential to the development of a fair and safe AI ecosystem. The EU now has the ideal opportunity to take a leading role in protecting its citizens through the AI Act.

“The European Parliament has taken a good first step by proposing transparency obligations for Foundation Models, such as ChatGPT or Bard, to ensure they provide a detailed summary of the copyright-protected works used for training and operate in respect of fundamental rights.”

The three umbrella bodies are now calling for EU member states and the Commission to “seize this rare opportunity to improve the proposal and finally put an end to the illegal sourcing and data-laundering abuses of generative AI developers”.

Meaningful transparency obligations could allow a rightsholder to assess whether their work was used are easy for the innovative AI operators to comply with.

These obligations are now needed as “damage is already done since existing generative text models used works since years without consent, credit or compensation to the authors and publishers”, the organisations said.

On Thursday (19th October), FEP will dedicate its Rendez-Vous at FBF to the impact of AI and possible steps towards protecting works in the context of Text and Data Mining (TDM).

AI has also been much discussed globally and within the UK recently. Last month several authors told The Bookseller of their dismay on finding their works used without permission for AI training models.