Publishers are struggling to get ahead of AI, artificial intelligence, and its impact on what is being published and by whom. They want to continue publishing to be done BY WHOM not BY WHAT.

I just ran across this post from Candlemark & Gleam, a publisher of speculative fiction, which gives you an idea of what publishers are up against:

Important note about submissions: as of March 23, 2023, Candlemark & Gleam is closed to submissions by authors not already published by the press or not accompanied by a recommendation from a trusted colleague. This has come about because there are many amazing works in the queue, but also due to the problems created by ChatGPT. We’ll announce when we’re open again to unsolicited submissions by authors new to us. We realize that this creates a terrible situation for new writers, and will be looking for longer-term solutions.

Publishers do not want AI material. A lot of people (I purposely avoid the use of the word WRITERS) are using AI to create scenes, chapters, and entire books with AI, then claim the work as totally their own when it is not. Many publishers are calling AI plagiarism, and the courts are mostly siding with them.

The Authors Guild has recommended a clause to be placed in publishing contracts to restrict an author’s works from being used to train AI. I’ve asked my publisher to consider it. If you don’t feed the beast, it cannot grow.

No Generative AI Training Use. For avoidance of doubt, Author reserves the rights, and [Publisher/Platform] has no rights to, reproduce and/or otherwise use the Work in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies to generate text, including without limitation, technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as the Work, unless [Publisher/Platform] obtains Author’s specific and express permission to do so. Nor does [Publisher/Platform] have the right to sublicense others to reproduce and/or otherwise use the Work in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies to generate text without Author’s specific and express permission.

The Writers Guild of America (WGA) is in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), with one of the hot topics being the use of AI in writing. WGA offered “that AI would be limited to research material and that AI writing “had no role in guild-covered work.”  They went on to say “…plagiarism is a feature of the AI process.”

My word of warning here is this . . . avoid using AI as much as possible until clarity is found in contracts and legal decisions. If AI becomes a dirty word in the publishing world, dirtier than it already is, you don’t want to get painted with the brush that takes down some writers and/or publishers.

FINAL NOTE: Any articles that come to FundsforWriters seeking publication, that can be suspected of being AI written (no personal experiences, no unique anecdotes, too generalized) will be rejected for giving the appearance of AI. We are already getting a certain type of article that has come from at least two dozen writers in the last month, that clearly has been run through an AI program from the generalization of the message.