Writers ask Alphabet and Meta to Pay for AI Training Data

[Troy]

This popped up in my email box today; the Authors Guild's Open Letter to Generative AI Leaders wants OpenAI, Alphabet, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft to obtain consent, credit, and fairly compensate writers for the use of copyrighted materials in training AI.

 

Good luck with that.

 

As long as these companies have been around, they have exploited people for their content. Meta would not exist were it not for the free user generated content they exploit and monetize. Meta has never paid writers or journalists for content -- indeed many of these folks pay Meta to get people to read the content that they post on their platforms. Don't even get me started on Alphabet, Google's Parent.

 

Over a decade ago I wrote about how these super-wealthy companies exploited Wikipedia's content without compensating any of Wikipedia's editors. Generative AI is no different.  AI just makes it far easier to take content and more difficult to attribute it.

 

There is a better chance that the descendants of enslaved Africans will be compensated monetarily by the U.S. government than any of these companies will pay any of the 10K writers who signed the petition for the content they wrote.

 

I like the Author's Guild, and I commend them for their intent, but this horse has been out of the barn for a loooong time. 

 

 

On a side note: I got an article I commissioned from a writer that I know was written by AI. There are too many tells with AI generated content (at least right now), so I sent it back to be rewritten, but I was shocked and disheartened.

 

 

Here is the letter

 

To: Sam Altman, CEO, OpenAI; Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet; Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, Meta; Emad Mostaque, CEO, Stability AI; Arvind Krishna, CEO, IBM; Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

From: [Your Name]

 

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 understand that many of the books used to develop AI systems originated from notorious piracy websites. Not only does the recent Supreme Court decision in Warhol v. Goldsmith make clear that the high commerciality of your use argues against fair use, but no court would excuse copying illegally sourced works as fair use. As a result of embedding our writings in your systems, generative AI threatens to damage our profession by flooding the market with mediocre, machine-written books, stories, and journalism based on our work. In the past decade or so, authors have experienced a forty percent decline in income, and the current median income for full-time writers in 2022 was only $23,000. The introduction of AI threatens to tip the scale 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.

 

We ask you, the leaders of AI, to mitigate the damage to our profession by taking the following steps:

 

1. Obtain permission for use of our copyrighted material in your generative AI programs.

2. Compensate writers fairly for the past and ongoing use of our works in your generative AI programs.

3. Compensate writers fairly for the use of our works in AI output, whether or not the outputs are infringing under current law.

 

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.

 

Sincerely,

The Authors Guild and the Undersigned Writers

Click here to view the letter with signatures (PDF).