Recently Hachette cancelled the novel *Shy Girl*, worried it was written by AI.
I've linked this below, its interesting.
However, I suspect the reason the book has been cancelled has nothing to do with ethics and EVERYTHING to do with the fact that AI work can't be copyrighted.
Publishers are more worried about protecting their moats than they are about the ethics of AI.
BTW, I write this as an author that has been published by Hachette.
So many thoughts on this ...
Is "AI works can't be copyrighted" sort of like "fair use" in that the real decision in any given case is up to the judge and maybe a jury?
How much was written by the author and how much by AI? How much does human editing of AI-generated text count as human creativity for purposes of assigning copyright?
How does anyone prove any of this? Will publishers need full version history? Is default assumption "human written" or the reverse?
My understanding is that work created by AI can't be copyrighted. This is also the worry of book publishers.
https://hbr.org/2023/04/generative-ai-has-an-intellectual-property-problem
Generative AI, which uses data lakes and question snippets to recover patterns and relationships, is becoming more prevalent in creative industries. However, the legal implications of using generative AI are still unclear, particularly in relation to copyright infringement, ownership of AI-generated works, and unlicensed content in training data. Courts are currently trying to establish how intellectual property laws should be applied to generative AI, and several cases have already been filed. To protect themselves from these risks, companies that use generative AI need to ensure that they are in compliance with the law and take steps to mitigate potential risks, such as ensuring they use training data free from unlicensed content and developing ways to show provenance of generated content.
That is my understanding as well. And, I didn't realize how detailed some of the advice already is --- only human edits are actually copyrightable, for example.
I wonder if the situation could change, though. The ArsTechnica article looks at how photographs became copyrightable and argues that the situation wrt AI is similar.
Also, AI text-generation is pretty good, detectors always behind, and people variable, so enforcement is not really possible. Maybe?
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/opinion-dont-exclude-ai-generated-art-from-copyright/
I think the real issue is that no one really knows. Plus, despite what people would like to thing, it very difficult to spot Ai writing and that will only get more difficult.
I think we are going to see writers (artists) documenting their work process in a way that allows them to prove human creation.
BubbleCow
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