UK Authors' Union Issues Guidance to 'Protect' Writers’ Work From AI - Decrypt

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• UK Authors' Union Issues Guidance to 'Protect' Writers’ Work From AI The Society of Authors warned writers to be careful as “money today could simply speed up the absence of any work at all in the future.”

• British writers’ trade union the Society of Authors (SoA) has issued practical steps for practitioners looking to protect themselves against a panoply of potentially adverse effects from artificial intelligence, as the technology impacts on the creative industries.  The guidance chiefly covers the contractual use of authors’ original work by publishers and production companies. It asks that writers be aware of any rights over their work or likeness that they could be forfeiting in their contracts.

• Performers and audiobook narrators are warned to be aware that by permitting the copying of their voice they could potentially compromise their future work by inadvertently permitting sophisticated speech modeling systems to substitute for performances.  The SoA asks that writers pay attention to the contractual terms of use of their work, how long it will be stored, to whom it will be permitted access, whether it will be edited/manipulated, and whether mechanisms are in place to reverse these terms if things go wrong.

• The guidance also advises against allowing publishers to “make substantial use of AI for any purpose in connection with your work” without consent. It goes on to list purposes like proof-reading, indexing, translation, and fact-checking and states that there are “questions over the current level of expertise afforded by AI.”  Finally, the SoA warns that work stored on cloud services can be used in the development and training of machine learning algorithms.