Industry bodies, creators sign open letter on AI training
In the UK, a coalition of trade bodies including the Publishers Association, the Society of Authors, Publishers’ Licensing Services, Independent Publishers Guild, Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society and Association of Authors’ Agents have signed a statement on AI training alongside thousands of creators worldwide, reports the Bookseller.
The open letter states: ‘The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.’
Of their decision to sign the statement, the industry bodies said: ‘This is a critical time for creators globally and in the UK we eagerly await the government’s next policy move domestically. This action from some of the people behind the books, films, music and art we love serves to shine a light on the threat to the creative community from AI companies using content without transparency, permission and fair compensation. That is why, as organisations that represent authors and the publishing sector, we have signed the statement.’
The statement comes after Penguin Random House changed the wording on its copyright pages to help protect authors’ intellectual property from being used to train large language models (LLMs) and other AI tools, according to the Bookseller.
The Bookseller reported new PRH copyright wording, which will appear ‘in imprint pages across our markets’, states: ‘No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems’.
In related news, the Frankfurt-based publishing technology and distribution company Bookwire has introduced technology, in a collaboration with Liccium, enabling all the ebooks and audiobooks it distributes to carry time-division multiplexing (TDM) notices opting out of the use of content for LLMs reports BookBrunch. Liccium founder and CEO Sebastian Posth said the arrangement was ‘a simple and efficient way to make machine-readable opt-out declarations or licensing offers publicly available’. Liccium and Bookwire will expand their partnership in 2025 to include the licensing of content to AI providers, according to BookBrunch. Bookwire legal counsel and data protection officer Nicolas Henning Bräuer said: ‘With our solutions, we offer publishers the opportunity not only to protect their content but also to benefit from the growing market for AI usage.’
Category: International news
