There is no doubt that artificial intelligence has already made inroads into our daily lives. Smart phones are, perhaps, too smart. But as AI continues to teach itself, there are things we can do, especially as writers, to keep AI from using our books to learn.
According the The Author’s Guild, placing a “no AI Training” statement on your copyright page is a start. Their free-to-use model statement is listed below. Author’s Guild members can also apply for a human-made seal for their works.
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
Those of us who are old enough to remember the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, have never forgotten the chilling scene where HAL, the precursor to AI, turns on his human counterpart and refuses to comply with an order. What I think is interesting is when I searched for that quote (so I could get it right), AI found exactly what I needed. Convenient, I guess, but also kind of chilling.
Nevertheless, take heart Water’s Edge Press community. Each book we publish is HUMAN MADE, whether or not it has a seal. We have begun to make that statement on the copyright pages of the books we publish as well as the “No AI Training” statement listed above.
What readers can do is to buy their books from reputable presses, like ours. While Amazon publishing requires their authors to state whether or not AI was used in a book’s creation, they have no qualms about selling AI made books. Reader beware! It’s a brave new world indeed.
