AI
Anthropic possibly purchased 1 million print books for scanning and AI model training
In addition to pirating ebooks, they bought print books from wholesalers and used book retailers, including Ingram and Baker & Taylor.
Publishers sue Google for AI model training
Hachette Book Group and Cengage are joining a 2023 lawsuit against Google for using books to train its AI model known as Gemini.
Ingram allows its client-publishers to opt out of selling their books to AI firms
It’s rumored that a growing number of AI companies are now buying and scanning books to train their models.
Author’s voice clone used for deepfake audio edition of his book
There's a twist: the author says sales of his books on Amazon have gone up as a result of the unauthorized YouTube recordings.
AI Detection Software: Who’s Using It and Is It Necessary?
Policies that prohibit AI use are easy enough to create, but they are not necessarily easy to enforce.
Writers and Artists Need a Way to Label AI Use: Here’s What That Could Look Like
To encourage transparency among creators and audience, one writer suggests a simple, two-category system for labeling AI use in works of art.
New AI-powered manuscript assessment tool
The tool, by software company Trilogy, helps agents and publishers evaluate unsolicited manuscripts—but are any likely to admit to using it?
Harlequin switches to AI for English-to-French translation
Human translators will still be involved but only to edit the machine output in French.
Authors Guild pushes Amazon on legality of “Ask This Book” feature
The Guild argues that interactive chatbots represent a new format for books, with rights that must be negotiated and paid for.
Nebula Awards prohibit LLM use “at any point during the writing process”
These policies ultimately invite writers to lie about using LLMs if they believe their own use can’t be detected.
Walt Disney and OpenAI’s Sora strike a deal
The companies have struck a three-year licensing agreement that allows users to create AI videos using more than 200 licensed characters.
Perplexity sued separately by New York Times and Chicago Tribune
The lawsuits accuse Perplexity of retrieving information in real time from paywalled sites without licensing.
One of the lawsuits to watch: OpenAI in the Second District
In one case, the judge has ordered OpenAI to provide in-house communications about deleting datasets they used to train ChatGPT.
UK publisher, Pan Macmillan, creates AI lead
Sara Lloyd has been appointed to a new role to determine the publisher’s AI strategy across its English-speaking operations.
IMHO: AI and the Trough of Despair
Last week in New Zealand, two books by esteemed authors were disqualified from competing for a national book award—comparable to the US National Book Award—because of AI artwork on the covers. But policies that disqualify AI work from awards or other consideration may not be sustainable for very long.
Can AI generate a meaningful book marketing plan?
Can an AI-generated marketing report help save you time and brainpower for more creative writing pursuits? Yes and no, with some urgent caveats.
Amazon offers free AI translation service to indie authors, raising copyright questions
The Authors Guild confirmed that an AI translation is not copyright protected under current US law.
If you encounter ClaimsHero, I suggest you ignore them
The Arizona law firm has no connection to the Anthropic case, but is trying to skim off authors in the class who may be unhappy about the current settlement.
AI firm wins copyright lawsuit in the UK
Getty Image’s lawsuit against Stable AI, for scraping millions of images to train its software, has failed in a narrow ruling.
A Deep Divide Emerges Between AI Users and Nonusers
A new survey provides ample evidence that AI is being used by many writers across all sectors.
Authors Guild lawsuit against OpenAI moving forward
The suit, consolidated with several other cases from a range of authors, alleges that ChatGPT’s outputs constitute copyright infringement.
Amazon, are you paying attention?
A new policy from Spotify about AI-generated content serves as example for what Amazon could implement regarding books, if they care to.
It’s a big deal: judge gives prelim approval for Anthropic settlement
Beginning October 2, authors can check an online searchable list to see if their works are included in the Anthropic settlement.
Anthropic settlement: proposed default split is 50-50 between author and publisher
The proposed split is common in publishing contracts for sharing the proceeds in copyright infringement cases.
How Creativity Survives in an AI Monoculture
One writer suggests that the antidote to ‘AI Slop’ is to bring our endlessly eccentric selves, resulting in idiosyncratic, unique outputs.