An open letter, signed by Margaret Atwood, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and 8,000 others, requests that AI usage of a writer’s work be accompanied by permission and fair compensation
Prominent authors like Margaret Atwood, Viet Thanh Nguyen, and Philip Pullman have joined a petition that urges artificial intelligence companies to refrain from using writers’ work without consent or proper credit.
The open letter, organized by the Authors Guild, the largest professional organization for writers in America, is directed to the CEOs of OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, and IBM. The letter includes three specific demands, asking these AI leaders to: seek permission for using copyrighted material from writers; provide fair compensation for past and ongoing use of authors’ works; and offer fair compensation for the use of authors’ works in AI output, regardless of whether the outputs infringe under current law.
Maya Shanbhag Lang, the president of the Authors Guild, expressed, “The output of AI will inherently be derivative. AI relies on the work of human writers, essentially regurgitating what it learns. It’s only just that authors receive compensation for their contributions to AI and its ongoing development.”
The letter also counts renowned authors such as Jonathan Franzen, Jodi Picoult, and Michael Pollan among its nearly 8,000 signatories.
Franzen stated that the Authors Guild is taking a crucial step to protect the rights of all Americans whose data, words, and images are being exploited without their consent, resulting in substantial profits. In essence, this affects nearly all Americans over the age of six.
According to the Authors Guild’s recent income survey, the median writing-related income for full-time writers in the US in 2022 was merely $23,330. The introduction of AI technology further compounds these challenges, making it increasingly difficult, and in some cases, impossible for writers, especially those from underrepresented communities, to sustain their livelihoods from their craft, which they dedicated years, if not decades, to perfect.
The Authors Guild emphasized that when writers are forced to abandon their profession, it becomes a grave concern for everyone, not just the writers themselves. This is because fewer exceptional books get written and published, and a free and democratic culture relies on a robust and diverse ecosystem where all perspectives, voices, and ideas are heard and exchanged.
