In September, the National Authors Guild and 17 other authors filed a class action lawsuit against OpenAI for copyright infringement of their fictional works, claiming that their works were used to train AI models without their consent. They then filed an amendment to add Microsoft to the list of defendants. The lawsuit has yet to be decided, but many authors feel their livelihoods are in jeopardy.
Rebecca Ackerman wrote for Esquire magazine about what artificial intelligence means for authors and the publishing industry. She discussed her article with “Marketplace” host Kimberly Adams. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.
Kimberly Adams: What are some of the concerns the author has about AI?
Rebecca Ackerman: I think there are a couple of things. I think the first one is about confusion. AI as a whole can mean a lot of different things, so it doesn’t feel like it makes much sense to people outside of the tech industry. First, I think authors don’t really know what AI is or what the threats are because they don’t really know what it is or what the companies that are developing it are trying to do. And then the other big concern, which I hear in other industries as well, is that AI is going to replace authors. AI is going to write all the books, AI is going to have all the money, and authors, who are already in a lot of financial difficulty, are going to be even worse off.
Adams: Speaking of money, what’s it like making a living as a writer these days?
Ackerman: This is very difficult, even for writers like me. A recent survey by the Authors Guild, the oldest writers’ organization in the United States, found that the average writer’s income in 2022 will be just $20,000, and only half of that will come from book sales. So, the reality is that it’s very difficult financially for writers to make a living from their work.
Adams:You also touched on how AI has impacted the self-publishing industry. What’s happening there?
Ackerman: Well, for better or worse, self-publishing is really booming. In many ways, many authors feel that they can now get their books and works out in the world in ways they never could before. This is very exciting. And on the other hand, I think there is a huge amount of content out there that readers can choose from and spend their money on in different ways. In 2023, 2.5 million books were self-published in the United States alone. That’s a lot. And one of the biggest drivers of self-publishing is Amazon. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform supports authors to publish their works online directly to the distribution network that Amazon has built.
Adams: Apparently there are ongoing lawsuits from authors who feel their work has been improperly scraped to train AI models, and many authors are concerned about this. Is there anything authors can do at this point to protect their work from being used to train AI models?
Ackerman: So the Authors Guild is recommending that you include an AI clause in your contract for the work itself, which means that the book can’t be used to train models. But it also applies to work related to publishing the book. So if you have an audiobook, you can include a clause that says, “I’d like you to have human actors record the audiobook.” So you’re protecting both how the content goes into the AI and the content that comes out of the AI. Where this conversation gets a little complicated is that the AI is about the content that’s used to train the AI, and the AI is about the content that the AI creates and how that content is used instead of or in collaboration with human artists.
Adams: Being a writer yourself, how do you feel about all of this?
Ackerman: That’s a great question. I come from a technology background. I worked in user interface at various technology companies before moving into journalism. The most frustrating thing for me is that the tech world and the cultural world speak different languages, and it’s very difficult to align the terminology and values of the two. That disconnect between the two worlds is the most frustrating thing, because I want to be able to find a way to embrace technology and also value the labor and humanity that goes into it.
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