AI Petition

[Demesnedenoir]

It might never accomplish anything, but...

Last week, SFWA signed the “Creators Call for Action on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Copyright Exceptions,” a joint action from 24 creator-led organizations delivered to the European Union and United States governing bodies. This letter addresses the harm already caused to creators by AI companies’ manipulations of exceptions to copyright enacted by the 2019 European Union Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market. The details of this issue are well explained on the National Writers Union (NWU) website.
We felt it was important to sign onto this particular joint call for a number of reasons:

• Working with other organizations to monitor and respond to developments both in generative AI and in the legal environment around it is essential to advocating for concrete protections and restitution for writers.
• Responding to the unique issues that AI presents to creative copyrights is a global effort, not one limited to Silicon Valley. It's important to ensure that writers' rights are respected around the world, so corporations who may try to relocate their operations rather than compensate creators fairly will have no place to go.
• This letter, written by the NWU, is one such global effort, and we encourage you to read the letter in full to better understand some of the important copyright issues regarding the use of AI/ML applications. You are welcome to distribute the joint call and spread the word. Access the PDF of the complete joint call for action here.

We’d also like to encourage our members to read and consider signing this open letter to AI/ML leaders from the Authors Guild. The letter, which was recently released, calls on AI companies to get permission from and compensate writers for the use of their works in the development and output of generative AI technologies. Over 8,000 authors have signed thus far.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Signed it.

While I think that the rise of AI is inevitable, since useful technology will always find a way, thought needs to be given to where the input comes from.

One thing that might be missing from the idea is that opt-in should always be freely given, and that there should be no downsides to opting out. What I mean by that is that we don't want to create a world where if you publish via Amazon you can chose between opting in for a ridiculously low amount or just never being found at all.

Amazon has such a market power in books, that if they decide only books that opt in to being used for AI can be found on Amazon or it doubles your rank or whatever, then indie authors have no choice. And they can then just decide to pay whatever they deem is fair. Or even pay you $100, but they'd simply charge you $100 to publish your book with them, basically again forcing you to opt-in for free.

The amount of ways Amazon especially, but also the other large tech companies can abuse this is high. And it should be limited from the outset, not fixed after the fact.