AI is killing literature, the writers' revolt

Over a thousand famous authors have signed an open letter that sounds like a declaration of war on artificial intelligence . The message to publishers is clear: either us or the machines. You can't have both.

The authors' revolt: "No more books written by machines"

Lauren Groff , Lev Grossman , Dennis Lehane . Names that sell millions of copies worldwide. Authors who could sit back and enjoy their royalties. Instead, they decided to go to war against artificial intelligence.

Their open letter to publishers is a no-nonsense ultimatum: either limit the use of AI or lose their best authors. Within 24 hours of publication, 1,100 more signed. It's no longer a protest, it's a movement.

The timing is no accident. While tech companies brag about their novel-writing chatbots , real writers are losing their jobs and their dignity. The final straw? Publishers starting to replace even audiobook narrators with artificial voices .

The authors accuse AI companies of “stealing” their work to train models: “ Instead of paying us a small percentage of the money our work generates for them, someone else will be paid for a technology built on our unpaid labor .” It is the denunciation of a perverse system. AIs learn by reading millions of books without paying the authors a cent. Then those same AIs are used to replace the writers. The frustration is more than understandable.

Writers' demands that put publishers in a tight spot

The authors don't just complain. They've drawn up a list of demands that sound like ultimatums:

• Never publish books created by machines. No novels written by ChatGPT and the like. Literature must remain human.
• Don’t replace human staff with AI. No layoffs disguised as “technological innovation.” Editors, proofreaders, translators must remain flesh-and-blood people.
• Only human narrators for audiobooks. No more synthetic voices that imitate famous actors without paying them.

Publishers are faced with a tough choice between the loyalty of their best-selling authors and the attractive prospect of cutting costs through automation.

The legal battle of the desks is going badly, but all is not lost yet

Meanwhile, the authors are also battling tech companies in court over the unauthorized use of their books in AI training . But the news is not good. This week, two federal judges ruled in favor of Anthropic and Meta in separate lawsuits.

Using published books to train AI doesn’t necessarily violate copyright, but the judge in Meta’s case made one important point . He made it clear that his decision didn’t give Meta carte blanche. He simply struck down the authors’ legal approach, which focused on “stealing” the books instead of attacking the real problem: AI that generates competing works using their work as a basis.

The writers have lost this battle, but the war is not over if they change tactics.