Over 8,000 authors including Booker-winners Margaret Atwood and George Saunders, and bestselling writers Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Egan, among others have signed an open letter to Generative AI Leaders asking them to seek permission, give due credits and fairly compensate writers for using their copyrighted works to train AI.
The open letter comes after American authors Paul Tremblay and Mona Awad sued Open AI in San Francisco federal court in June 2023, claiming in that the company misused their works to train ChatGPT, reported Reuters.
Now, the Authors Guild’s open letter is addressed to Sam Altman- CEO of OpenAI; Sundar Pichai- CEO of Alphabet; Satya Nadella- CEO of Microsoft; Mark Zuckerberg- CEO of Meta; Arvind Krishna- CEO of IBM; and Emad Mostaque- CEO of Stability AI. The letter is written with the aim to “mitigate the damage to our profession” done by AI.
The letter reads, as reported by The Bookseller, “We, the undersigned, call your attention to the inherent injustice in exploiting our works as part of your AI systems without our consent, credit or compensation.
“Generative AI technologies built on large language models owe their existence to our writings. These technologies mimic and regurgitate our language, stories, style and ideas. Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ’food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill. You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology.
“It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited [...] We hope you will appreciate the gravity of our concerns and that you will work with us to ensure, in the years to come, a healthy ecosystem for authors and journalists.”
With the rise in use and popularity of ChatGPT and other AI technologies, they have also been in the news regarding the copyright issues, and its impact on the creative works and ideas of authors and illustrators.
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