This week in “who could possibly have seen it coming,” there has been a reaction against the Charter of Ethical AI Use I reported on at the end of last week. The Charter seeks to set standards it wanted companies working in the industry to adhere to if they do use AI, such as transparency, consent, and licensing arrangements with creators.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
The backlash came in the form of allegations that this was allowing too much, and that a red line should instead be drawn against the use of AI altogether. The Bookseller's report on the controversy has some choice phraseology from authors, including seasonally appropriate references to inviting vampires over thresholds.
The Society of Authors Responds
The UK's Society of Authors, one of the leading groups behind the Charter, has been quick to come out in defense of its pro-creator credentials. CEO Anna Ganley has responded in a forceful blog, at the heart of which is the following sentence that expresses the pragmatic case for the Charter:
“We are deeply concerned that people within the industry are using generative AI in the shadows, where it cannot be monitored or its use and impacts fully understood.”
It's a frequently used argument in myriad settings: regulation rather than banning will at least bring scrutiny and standards to a practice that can't realistically be stopped in one go. Ganley claims her organization is no less opposed than it has always been to the use of generative AI and no less clear on its harms.
A New Human Authorship Label
On a similar note, last week saw the launch of another organization seeking to offer reassurance of the human authorship of books. Books By People at the moment is a “for publisher” organization that doesn't seem to be set up for indies (nor, from what I can see, does it seem to exclude indies who publish under their own imprint).
Unlike some other organizations offering a label to put on your book, Books By People requires what it considers sufficient proof of human authorship to meet a bar making the label meaningful. That includes manuscript history among other things. There are many people I respect who are involved in setting this up, and they make a compelling case for the marketing value of offering readers guaranteed human authorship. For clarity, no generative AI is permitted in the creation of the content of eligible titles, though tools like AI spell checkers are allowed.
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