We're Losing the Battle Against AI

The Authors Guild and Created by Humans announce new efforts in the fight, but it's not enough

Two things happened in the writerly world this week in furtherance of the fight against artificial intelligence: The Authors Guild (AG) and start-up company Created by Humans (CbH) announced a new partnership that shows us that creative minds are at work trying to find ways to combat the threats AI poses—to creative content, to earnings potential and writer/author livelihoods, and, depending on your feelings about such things, to our very way of life; and the AG rolled out a new badge for authors to put on their books to declare them “human authored.”

The New York Times reported this week that CbH will be soon (as in this year) be launching a platform where publishers and authors can register their books to license to AI companies. This is an effort to get AI companies to pay for the content they’re currently nabbing from publishers and authors without consequence or repercussions. According to Trip Adler, co-founder and chief executive of CbH, “Several A.I. companies have already registered interest in licensing book content through the platform.” Nothing was said about which publishers and authors have expressed interest in signing up, however.

The “human authored” badge that is an initiative that stems from the advocacy the AG has been doing for more than a year now, efforting to get everything that’s AI-generated to be labeled as such. Say what you are, not what you’re not—a good principle of communication and education. Better to say your book is human authored rather than “not AI,” and I like where the AG is going with this.

Several of my authors asked me this week what I think about the badge. Will She Writes Press and SparkPress be mandating this badge be placed on our covers any time soon? No. Am I fine if authors who want it on their books have it there? Absolutely.

In a forthcoming episode of my podcast, Write-minded (airing in the next couple weeks), we’re bringing on Michael Castleman, who wrote The Untold Story of Books. On the title page, the first thing I noticed was the prominent line under his name: 100% author-written, it said. I thought that was clever. But the cynical part of me wondered: Who’s to stop anyone publishing AI-generated content from putting similar messaging in their books?

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This weekend I moderated a panel about ghostwriting at LitQuake, San Francisco’s annual literary festival, and at the end someone asked us a question about AI. He was part of an “aspiring nonprofit” (according to the site’s X account) called Stop AI. The questioner was much more passionate than the panelists about the threat AI poses to book publishing and the ghostwriters’ livelihood. But every single one of the ghosts said the same thing, emphatically: we’re not there yet.

I think it’s true that certain kinds of content creators don’t have to worry about being replaced by AI—yet. But several stories covering the AG-CbH partnership this week referenced “AI slop” (this subscription-only “Drowning in Slop” from The Intelligencer is worth getting a free trial to read), the AI crap content that’s the equivalent of spam. The author of the article writes:

Attempting to read news online is now fraught with the possibility that you’re consuming unedited AI-generated tattle: CNET, BuzzFeed, USA Today, and Sports Illustrated have published stilted and often incorrect AI-generated articles or used phony images and biographies for “authors.”

Earlier this month, the children of Kim Porter, Sean Combs’s long-time girlfriend, denounced as fake the memoir titled Kim’s Lost Words: A Journey for Justice, From the Other Side, which had become an Amazon bestseller in the wake of the recent explosive Diddy allegations.

In short, you don’t have to read too far into or about AI-generated content to feel concerned. We’re a bit like a village on the shore of an anticipated tsunami. We know it’s coming, but we don’t know how bad it will be, and we’re grossly underprepared no matter what. The Authors Guild continues to be David in the fight against Goliath. They are tireless, relentless, and focused. I’ve called for this before, but if you’re a writer or an author, become a member. They’re doing the work our government should be doing, but is either too lazy, too shortsighted, or too chicken-shit to take on in any meaningful way.

As a publisher I feel helpless against the forces and inevitability of AI. I’m too cynical to believe that AI companies will pay to license content if they’re getting away with not doing so now. They’ve proven themselves to have no compunction whatsoever about stealing authors’ work for the “greater good” of their grandiose vision, so what would compel them to pay moving forward? Maybe public pressure, but I doubt it.

As for the badges, I am receptive. I also am a fan of the “100% author-written” line on the title page, which wouldn’t be subject to whatever AG measures will be involved to get the badge, but still: Say what you are, not what you’re not applies here too. It’s just that I feel this is a drop in the bucket, and that the bigger problem we face is unsolvable for our lack of resolve in wanting to solve it.

Writers and authors, we’re in it. I try to end my posts on a positive note when I can, but this stuff is truly depressing and I’m struggling to leave you all with any real sense that we’re moving the needle in a positive direction in this fight. Our content ecosystem is increasingly becoming a dumpster, spilling over into a landfill, much to the chagrin of people who love words, who live by words, and who crave good, author-created content. The publishing world is taking small actions, but it’s not enough. We need real regulation, on the level of government oversight. After all, how can CbH, with its $5 million in start-up money, hope to impose licensing agreements for companies like Chat GPT, which earned $2.7 billion in revenue this year? In the capitalist world we live in, David doesn’t stand a chance. He sounds the alarm and no one listens. Goliath cheats and doesn’t face any repercussions. We’re not setting up the conditions for this fable to be our someday reality.