Thousands of writers urge AI companies to honor copyrights

By Firdevs Bulut Kartal

TORONTO (AA) - Thousands of writers have urged AI companies to seek permission before incorporating copyrighted works into their technologies.

Among the authors who published an open letter to AI leaders are James Patterson, Suzanne Collins, and Canadian author Margaret Atwood.

"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," the letter said.

The letter addressed to OpenAI, Meta, Microsoft, and other AI companies was signed by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelists Jennifer Egan, Michael Chabon, and Louise Erdrich, as well as authors such as Jonathan Franzen, Celeste Ng, Nora Roberts, and Ron Chernow.

The authors asked the AI leaders to obtain permission for the copyrighted material in the generative AI programs, and compensate writers fairly for the use of their works in AI programs.

Authors should be compensated fairly because they are not robots to be programmed, and AI cannot create human stories without taking from human stories already written, Nora Roberts said in a statement regarding the letter.