Thousands of authors including Atwood, Egan and Picoult sign AI open letter

More than 8,000 authors including Margaret Atwood, Jennifer Egan, George Saunders and Jodi Picoult have signed The Authors Guild’s open letter to Generative AI Leaders calling on the chief executive officers of OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI and IBM to obtain consent, credit, and fairly compensate writers for the use of copyrighted materials in training AI.

The letter calls on Sam Altman, c.e.o. of OpenAI; Sundar Pichai, c.e.o. of Alphabet; Mark Zuckerberg, c.e.o. of Meta; Emad Mostaque, c.e.o. of Stability AI; Arvind Krishna, c.e.o. of IBM; and Satya Nadella, c.e.o. of Microsoft to “mitigate the damage to our profession” done by AI.

It calls on them to obtain permission for use of authors’ copyrighted material in their generative AI programs, compensate writers fairly for the past and ongoing use of their works in generative AI programs and compensate writers fairly for the use of their works in AI output, whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.

The letter reads: “We, the undersigned, call your attention to the inherent injustice in exploiting our works as part of your AI systems without our consent, credit or compensation.
“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. 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 [...] 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.”

ChatGPT and AI technologies have recently been a topic of debate among publishing professionals as regards copyright issues, the impact on authors and illustrators, and the lack of governance.

The Publishers Association announced in May plans to form an AI taskforce to support the industry as it navigates rapid new developments in Artificial Intelligence.

Chief executive Dan Conway told The Bookseller at the time: “Publishers have embraced AI to add value throughout their work and are excited about the opportunities it brings to better serve their customers and free-up and enhance human creativity.

"That being said, it is a complex and fast-moving area and there are some big unanswered questions and areas of legitimate concern, including the policy processes surrounding copyright and text and data mining and how to protect the value of human creativity.

“We will work through our new AI taskforce to keep pace with developments for the industry to try and ensure that publishers and their authors can make the most of emerging technologies, while mitigating the legitimate concerns that exist around policy and regulation where they occur.”