War of Words: Writers Unite in the Face of Generative AI – News18

Generative artificial intelligence programs use billions of literary texts to train their algorithms and create content. This is a practice that many writers view in a very dim light. Some of them are now asking to be paid for their contributions to the development of these technologies. “Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” lament over 8,000 authors, including Margaret Atwood and James Patterson in an open letter. They want the major players in artificial intelligence, including Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman and Satya Nadella, to limit the “damage” caused by generative AI programs to an already fragile profession.

The signatories detail these concerns in a document published on the Action Network website, pointing out that “generative AI threatens to damage our profession by flooding the market with mediocre, machine-written books, stories, and journalism based on our work.” As a result, writing professionals find themselves deprived of certain essential income sources. The Authors Guild, the oldest and largest professional organization for writers on the American continent, estimates that their income has fallen by 40% over the last decade.

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While this decline is not directly attributable to generative artificial intelligence, the authors of the open letter argue that the rise of these technologies threatens to make it “even more difficult, if not impossible, for writers — especially young writers and voices from under-represented communities — to earn a living from their profession.” This is why they are calling on companies involved in AI development to obtain the official consent of authors whose books are used to train algorithms, to acknowledge their authorship and to pay them financial compensation.

Among the signatories to the text are some of the biggest names in world literature, such as Dan Brown, author of the best-selling “Da Vinci Code,” Suzanne Collins, author of the “Hunger Games” series of novels, and Viet Thanh Nguyen, winner of the Edgar-Allan-Poe Award for Best First Novel and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The American author and screenwriter Michael Chabon, writer Louise Erdrich, author Paul Tremblay and novelists Jodi Picoult, Nora Roberts and Jennifer Egan are also on the list.

The publication of this open letter comes at a particularly tricky time for AI companies, as some of them are being sued for their failure to respect intellectual property rights. OpenAI and Google are the target of several such claims, including a lawsuit filed by novelists Mona Awad and Paul Tremblay, according to the Guardian. The outcome of these proceedings is still uncertain, since AI companies rely on the American principle of “fair use” to justify the harvesting of millions of texts. But the tide seems to be turning for AI.

(This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed – AFP)