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By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Pallante: ‘ Lawful Licenses and Respect, Not a Land Grab’
Unusual both for its international breadth and its terse brevity, the “Statement on AI Training” carries a single line of text:
“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.”
The message, quickly gathering signatures from an international host of professionals in publishing and many other creative industries, is highlighted, of course, for its celebrity signatories who include the author Sir Kazuo Ishiguro; the actor Kevin Bacon; the composer Max Richter; the comedian Rose O’Donnell; the Greek historian Peter Frankopan; the songwriter Billy Bragg; the photographer Andrew Urban; and journalist Dag Idar Tryggestad.
Organizations include José Borghino for the International Publishers Association (IPA); Penguin Random House; Universal Music Group; Mary Rasenberger for the United States’ Authors Guild; David Shelley for Hachette Book Group;
At this writing, signatories reportedly come to at least 13,500 people and organizations today (October 23).
Conway: ‘A Critical Time for Creators Globally’
In that separate section of organizations signing their support for the statement, both the United Kingdom’s Dan Conway for the Publishers Association in London and the United States’ Maria A. Pallante for the Association of American Publishers have taken a prominent position, each alerting the news media to their engagement with the statement.
Maria A. Pallante
Pallante, the AAP president and CEO, tells the news media, “The Association of American Publishers is proud to stand with thousands of creators and partner organizations to highlight that human authorship is the basis of generative AI.
“What is true is that creators operate in service to a well-read, informed, and inspired global public, not the unsanctioned, unregulated profits of big tech companies.
“It goes without saying that technology collaborations are a key part of publishing, but they’re built on lawful licenses and respect, not a land grab.”
Dan Conway
With the PA’s media messaging from London—actually speaking for a group of six organizations—we read Conway’s team, writing, “The Publishers Association, Publishers’ Licensing Services, Independent Publishers Guild, Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society, Association of Authors’ Agents, and the Society of Authors have joined with more than 10,500 creators—writers, musicians, artists, photographers, actors and more—from around the world to highlight the unlicensed training of generative AI models on creative works.
“This is a critical time for creators globally, and in the UK we eagerly await the government’s next policy move domestically.
“This action from some of the people behind the books, films, music, and art we love serves to shine a light on the threat to the creative community from AI companies using content without transparency, permission and fair compensation. That is why, as organizations that represent authors and the publishing sector, we have signed the statement.”
Ed Newton-Rex
Composer and former AI executive Ed Newton-Rex—whose company Fairly Trained. played a role in the AAP’s 2024 annual meeting in May—is the organizer of the letter, known for having resigned from his job as chief of audio at Stability because of his disagreement with the company’s reported stance on the uncompensated use of copyrighted content.
“There are three key resources that generative AI companies need to build AI models,” Newton-Rex says to Dan Milmo for an article in The Guardian: “people, compute, and data. They spend vast sums on the first two—sometimes a million dollars per engineer, and up to a billion dollars per model. But they expect to take the third—training data—for free.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on issues in artificial intelligence is here, more on copyright is here, and more on the threat to the “trinity” of freedoms imposed, in part, by generative AI training without permission is here.
Publishing Perspectives is the International Publishers Association’s world media partner.