More than 13,000 authors in the UK have weighed in on the subject of AI. Three fourths of them didn’t even know if their work was being sampled by an AI. But nine in ten said that AI tapping their writing would be okay, if they were consulted and compensated. Three in four wanted a means to opt out.
Publishing is unfair by nature, until we teach it otherwise. Publishers didn’t even want to sign contracts in the 1800s, and the early part of the 1900s clipped along without agents to represent authors. The twentieth was the first century to stop the concept of stealing English language books from across the Atlantic. Runners would bolt down to the docks in the 1800s when a ship from England arrived, eager to grab a copy of a popular book from England — then racing back to the publishing house and be the first to reprint and sell the book in America. No compensation to the author was needed. That was an English matter.
Of course, that’s crook-work. It also shows that when justice and commerce eventually get together, it can change things. Worldwide rights are always a matter for authors now. In our modern era, our AI systems—advanced software and blistering-fast computers are having their way with authors’ works. Just in the last few years, though, contracts are changing. At least some publishers will admit they’re selling off AI rights without paying authors. These things change, over time, but in the past it’s been decades of pushing to shift things.
Everything moves faster now, including a sense of justice and ways of mastering opportunity. I have faith that eventually the powers of that software will come to serve people who make stories and reveal facts. And the poets? We’re borrowing from them constantly, and they understand that being sampled is a way of being heard. Hug or high-five a poet this week. Ask your publisher for an AI rights clause, or make your agent do the asking, I say.
It takes some faith to push a creation into the world, and delusion is a pretty potent driver, too. But we don’t have to be delusional about our good works. Novelist Ann Patchett said, “What matters is that we do our best with the life that we have, that we show up, that we love each other, and that we try to be as aware as is humanly possible of the life and the gift that we’re given, and to help other people wherever we can.”
Contract by contract, story by story, we’ll get there. To believe anything else is a dark place to live, and we’re still creatures that seek the light.
