More than 8,000 authors have sent an open letter to tech giants advancing artificial intelligence (AI) seeking compensation for the use of their copyrighted works in training AI.
“Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays and poetry provide the 'food' for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill," the letter by the Authors Guild said.
It is addressed to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google parent Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Its signatories include best-selling writers James Patterson, Margaret Atwood, Dan Brown, Jodi Picoult, Celeste Ng, Suzanne Collins, Jennifer Ega, and Nora Roberts.
The authors are seeking that the AI companies obtain permission for the use of copyrighted materials in generative AI programs and compensate writers for the past and ongoing use of their works.
AI is trained on large datasets, usually pulled from the internet, but it is unclear to what extent AI companies have gained permission to use this content to train their systems.
“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.
OpenAI, Google, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
It comes after lawsuits were recently filed against OpenAI and Meta by comedian and author Sarah Silverman who claims the companies used her memoir The Bedwetter to train their AI models without her consent.
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