James Patterson, Margaret Atwood, and 8,000 other authors want AI companies to pay them for using their works

James Patterson, Margaret Atwood, and 8,000 other authors want AI companies to pay them for using their works

Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• Over 8,000 authors signed a letter saying the AI industry uses their work without permission.
• They're telling companies to "mitigate the damage" to their profession caused by generative AI.
• There has been deepening criticism of AI companies from across the media and entertainment industries.

Over 8,000 authors — including Margaret Atwood and James Patterson — have signed an open letter demanding compensation from AI companies for using their works to train AI without permission.

"Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the "food" for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill," the authors wrote in a letter published by the Authors Guild on Tuesday.

The letter is addressed to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

"As a result of embedding our writings in your systems, generative AI threatens to damage our profession by flooding the market with mediocre, machine-written books, stories, and journalism based on our work," the letter reads.

Per the letter, authors have seen a 40% drop in earnings in the past decade, with full-time writers' median income in 2022 being just $23,330, the Authors Guild's found after surveying over 5,700 participants.

The Authors Guild says AI technology will make it even harder for writers to make a living.

The letter's over 8,000 signatories — including "The Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown and "The Hunger Games" writer Suzanne Collins — want AI companies to "mitigate the damage to our profession" by providing compensation for past and future uses of their writing, per the letter.

AI systems are trained on large volumes of data, much of which is text scraped from the internet. However, the extent to which companies have legally obtained permissions for this AI training remains unclear, the Wall Street Journal reported.

OpenAI, Google, Meta, Stability AI, IBM, and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider. OpenAI said in a statement to the Journal that ChatGPT is trained on "licensed content, publicly available content, and content created by human AI trainers and users," adding that the company respects the rights of creators and authors.

The authors' demand comes amid two lawsuits against OpenAI from authors accusing the company of copyright infringement — including one from Sarah Silverman claiming unauthorized use of her memoir, "The Bedwetter."

These authors aren't alone in voicing collective discontent towards AI companies.

Artists — like Sarah Andersen — are so concerned about generative AI replacing them, that they've begun using tools to prevent AI from using their work, Insider's Matthew Loh reported earlier this month.

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