A group of authors has issued an open letter calling on publishers to restrict their use of artificial intelligence in their workflow.
According to TechCrunch, the letter—signed by authors such as Lauren Groff, Lev Grossman, R.F. Kuang, Dennis Lehane, and Jeffrey Maguire—asks book publishers to commit to limiting their reliance on AI tools. One specific request is to continue hiring human narrators for audiobooks rather than using AI-generated voices.
Authors Request Publishers Not to Use AI for Audiobook Production
The letter also accuses AI companies of stealing authors’ works. The writers point out that, “Instead of a small portion of the revenue from our works going to us, that money is being funneled to others who have built technology off our unpaid labor.”
Elsewhere in the letter, the authors urge publishers to pledge never to publish books generated by machines, to refrain from replacing human staff with AI tools, and not to reduce human roles to mere supervisors of AI systems.
The original letter garnered a significant number of signatures, and within 24 hours of its initial release, over 1,100 additional authors had added their names. Writers have also filed lawsuits against tech companies for using their books to train AI models, though some federal judges have ruled in favor of the tech firms.
For instance, just last week, a U.S. federal judge ruled that the company Anthropic could use authors’ works to train its AI models without obtaining permission from publishers or writers.
Copyright Concerns Extend to the Music Industry
The outcry over AI-related copyright violations has spread to the music world as well. Previously, a group of prominent British singers and musicians urged the U.K. government to reconsider laws that allow AI companies to use artists’ works without permission.
