Thousands of Authors Urge AI Companies To Stop Using Work Without Permission

Thousands of writers including Nora Roberts, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Michael Chabon and Margaret Atwood have signed a letter asking artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI and Meta to stop using their work without permission or compensation. From a report: It's the latest in a volley of counter-offensives the literary world has launched in recent weeks against AI. But protecting writers from the negative impacts of these technologies is not an easy proposition. According to a forthcoming report from The Authors Guild, the median income for a full-time writer last year was $23,000. And writers' incomes declined by 42% between 2009 and 2019. The advent of text-based generative AI applications like GPT-4 and Bard, that scrape the Web for authors' content without permission or compensation and then use it to produce new content in response to users' prompts, is giving writers across the country even more cause for worry. "There's no urgent need for AI to write a novel," said Alexander Chee, the bestselling author of novels like Edinburgh and The Queen of the Night. "The only people who might need that are the people who object to paying writers what they're worth." Chee is among the nearly 8,000 authors who just signed a letter addressed to the leaders of six AI companies including OpenAI, Alphabet and Meta. "It says it's not fair to use our stuff in your AI without permission or payment," said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of The Author's Guild. The non-profit writers' advocacy organization created the letter, and sent it out to the AI companies on Monday. "So please start compensating us and talking to us."

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