Open Letter: Writers Demand Their Texts Stop Being Used in AI Development

Artificial intelligence has stepped on the toes of well-known writers who have decided to unite and send an open letter to the CEOs of tech giants. The problem is that AI technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated and is capable of generating text that mimics the style of a particular writer.

For example, if a user requests text inspired by certain authors, such as Margaret Atwood or Suzanne Collins, the program is able to produce entire passages in a style that frighteningly resembles that of the requested authors, as it is trained specifically on their works.

Authors, numbering eight thousand (including the aforementioned), have composed a letter titled ‘The Authors Guild’s Open Letter to Generative AI Leaders’ in which they demand compensation from the CEOs of OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft, and want to be asked for permission to use their texts.

Damage to Writers

They claim that generative AI technologies are created on language models that owe their existence to their works. Millions of protected books, articles, essays, and poetry serve as a kind of ‘food’ for AI systems, and for these meals, they continue, no one is presenting a bill.

– You are spending billions of dollars on the development of AI technology. It would be fair to compensate us for the use of our texts without which artificial intelligence would be banal and extremely limited – the authors stated, adding that training artificial intelligence on their work is not only illegal but also harms professional writers.

The result of embedding texts into systems allows generative artificial intelligence to flood the market with mediocre, machine-written books, stories, and articles that are, in essence, created based on someone else’s work.

In the open letter, they also present their demands such as seeking permission for the use of their work and compensation for past and future use of their texts.