Clarkesworld Magazine and Forever Magazine editor and publisher Neil Clarke released a statement about the Writer's Guild of America strike and hopes others will sign onto it too: "I've complained that various publishing industry groups have been slow to respond to recent developments in AI, like LLMs. Over the last week, I've been tinkering with a series of "belief" statements that other industry folks could sign onto. I'm finally ready to start sharing a draft."
"Where We Stand on AI in Publishing
We believe that AI technologies will likely create significant breakthroughs in a wide range of fields, but that those gains should be earned through the ethical use and acquisition of data.
We believe that "fair use" exceptions (and similar exceptions in other countries) with regards to authors', artists', translators', and narrators' creative output should not apply to the training of AI technologies, such as LLMs, and that explicit consent to use those works should be required.
We believe that the increased speed of progress achieved by acquiring AI training data without consent is not an adequate or legitimate excuse to continue employing those practices.
We believe that AI technologies also have the potential to create significant harm and that to help mitigate some of that damage, the companies producing these tools should be required to provide easily-available, inexpensive (or subsidized), and reliable detection tools."
Click here to read the entire statement addressed to authors, publishers, copyright holders, individuals, and governments.
Clarke is clear in his reasons for publishing this statement: "Feedback welcome, but if you are here to discourage, move along. Not interested in a fight."
Check out Tom Dunn's post about the inundation of AI submissions to online magazines.
