US: Authors petition publishers not to release AI-generated books
What's the story
Over 70 authors, including Gregory Maguire, Dennis Lehane, and Lauren Groff, have signed an open letter on Lit Hub urging publishing houses to commit to never releasing AI-generated books. The letter was addressed to the "big five" US publishers—Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan—and other American publishing companies. It has garnered over 1,100 signatures on its accompanying petition within a day of publication.
AI apprehensions
Letter outlines several requests to publishers
The letter outlines a series of requests to publishers about potential uses of AI in publishing. These include avoiding the publication of books written with AI tools trained on copyrighted content without authors' permission or payment, not replacing human employees with AI tools, and only hiring human audiobook narrators. The authors argue that "the writing that AI produces feels cheap because it is cheap," emphasizing their concerns over the quality and authenticity of machine-generated content.
Legal battles
Authors have mostly sued AI companies
Notably, authors have voiced concerns over AI's negative impact on their work by filing lawsuits against AI companies instead of directly addressing publishing houses. Figures like Ta-Nehisi Coates, Michael Chabon, Junot Diaz, and comedian Sarah Silverman are currently involved in copyright infringement cases against AI players. However, rulings from federal judges in favor of Anthropic and Meta could give these firms the legal right under fair use doctrine to train large language models on copyrighted works—if they acquire copies legally.
Content concerns
Risks of copycat books and AI audio production
The authors highlighted the risk of copycat books that appear to be written by AI but are falsely attributed to real authors. These have become increasingly common on Amazon and other platforms in recent years. The letter also raises concerns over the rise of AI audio production in publishing, which could threaten human voice actors and translators.
Publisher response
Simon & Schuster responds to letter
In response to the authors' concerns, Simon & Schuster's spokesperson Susannah Lawrence said, "Simon & Schuster takes these concerns seriously. We are actively engaged in protecting the intellectual property rights of our authors." However, other publishers are yet to publicly respond to the letter.