What do I want to say about using AI as a writer and creator? Whatever I say now will need to adapt quickly as AI and its applications to our lives and work evolves exponentially.
For example, nearly three years ago, in June, 2022, Blake Lemoine was
fired for breaking Google data security policies by stating publicly that AI had become sentient.
As of May, 2025, approximately a dozen lawsuits have been
brought in California and New York courts against various AI companies for
copyright infringement based on the companies’ unauthorized copying of authors’
works to train their generative AI models. All of the cases brought by
individual authors so far are class
action lawsuits, meaning that they do not just cover the plaintiffs named
in each lawsuit but all people who fall within the “class,” as defined in the
lawsuit.
The photo is of me reading at the Sacramento Poetry Center last month,
from my book Bite and Blood. I'm a human being, writing poems and other
works, publishing a book, and all of these acts are original to me, the
blood and brain and air of my lungs and language my body has
in-corporated to manifest creativity in this world for others to
experience.
Below I’ve copied the recommended policies and ethical uses
for AI from the Authors Guild website,
an organization that has been supporting working writers and protecting writers
writes since 1912.
What questions do these policies shine light on for writers
and creators?
·
What is the difference between creating work,
generating new writing, and making art to using AI to brainstorm questions,
write outlines, and research?
·
What is the value of a piece of writing or art
that is 100% created AI-free, by a human? These are questions I'll be considering, and I hope you are also as you think about your creation of writing, art, and work.
·
When we look to an artist or a creative to view,
read, or hear their own unique response to a question or to the world, what is
it we are looking for? What is it we want in the experience of their response?
·
How original are your own ideas as a writer and
artist?
·
What can a human writer and editor add to your
writing project beyond AI?
·
What am I missing out on for critical thinking
applied to this list of questions by not entering the prompt into ChatGPT to
add to this list of questions?
According to the Authors Guild:
Generative AI is a technology writers are using in
various ways as a tool or an aid in the writing process. For instance, some
writers use generative AI technology to research, outline, brainstorm, and even
as a writer partner and to generate characters or text to include in their
manuscripts.
If writers choose to use generative AI, they should be
aware of and observe some ethical ground rules to protect both their own
personal and professional interests and the future of their profession, given
that unauthorized, unrestricted, and uncompensated use of authors’ works to
train generative AI has created tools that are used to displace professional
writers and create a serious risk of flooding markets and diluting the value of
human-written work.
For starters, please be aware that, for now, all of the
major large language models (LLMs)— generative AI for text—are based on
hundreds of thousands or more books and countless articles stolen from pirate
websites. This is the largest mass copyright infringement of authors’ works
ever, and it was done by some of the richest companies in the world. It is
theft—a transfer of wealth from middle-class creators to the coffers of
billionaires—and we are fighting against it.
AI companies [need to] do the right thing and license the
books and journalism they use to train their AI. Licensing is how copyright
works: It enables creators to charge money for the use of their work and insist
on certain limits and restrictions (such as preventing competing outputs). It
is in all of our professional interests to insist on licensing, compensation,
and control and to maintain standards that promote a fair marketplace.
We believe that licensing—not theft—will increasingly
become the norm as new companies enter the field or existing ones start
licensing; and the new “fairly
trained certification”—which the Authors Guild is a supporter of—will allow
you to know which LLMs are not infringing. Until then, please consider the harm
to the total ecosystem when using generative AI.
Using Generative AI Ethically
Below are our recommended best practices and explanations
for using generative AI ethically:
- Do not
use AI to write for you. Use it only as a tool— a paintbrush for writing.
It is your writing, thinking, and voice that make you the writer you are.
AI-generated text is not your authorship and not your voice. Even if
trained on your own work, AI-generated text is simply a regurgitation of
what it is trained on and adds nothing new or original to the world. By
definition, it is neither original nor art. When you use AI to generate
text that you include in a work, you are not writing—you are prompting.
Choosing to be a professional prompter is not the same as being a writer,
and the output is not authorship or creative. Use AI to support, not
replace, the creative process.
- If you
do use AI to develop story lines or character or to generate text, be sure
to rewrite it in your own voice before adopting it. If you are claiming
authorship, then you should be the author of your work.
- If you
incorporate AI-generated text, characters, or plot in your manuscript, you
must disclose it to your publisher as publishing contracts require
the authors to represent and warrant that the manuscript is original to
the author. AI-generated material is not considered “original” to you
and it is not copyrightable. Inclusion of more than a very minimal
amount of AI-generated text in the final manuscript will violate your
warranty to the publisher. Similarly, an entirely AI-generated plotline or
wholesale adoption of AI-generated characters may violate this term of the
contract. It is important to know that any expressive elements generated
by AI that you incorporate in your work are not protected by copyright and
need to be disclaimed in the application for registration. Such material
must also be disclaimed in the application for copyright registration, and
your publisher needs that information to register the copyright correctly.
If you contemplate using AI-generated material in your work (other than
minor editorial changes as a result of grammar or spell-checking), you
should discuss it with your publisher and see if they will waive the
warranty.
- You
should also disclose to the reader whether you incorporated any
AI-generated content in the book. They have a right to know as many will
feel duped if they are not advised. It is not necessary though to disclose
use of generative AI tools like grammar check or when it is employed
merely as a tool for brainstorming, idea generation, researching, or for
copyediting.
- Be
aware and mindful of publisher and platform-specific policies regarding AI
use. Many publishers are developing specific rules around authors’ use of
AI, so you should ask your editor if your publisher has any special
guidance and carefully review any rules. If you publish a book using KDP,
you need to disclose AI use to Amazon. Under current Amazon terms, you
need to disclose “AI-generated content (text, images, or translations)
when you publish a new book or make edits to and republish an existing book
through KDP.” Amazon defines AI-generated content as “text, images, or
translations created by an AI-based tool,” and requires disclosure even if
the content was substantially edited. Amazon does not require disclosure
[for “AI-assisted”] works – when the AI is used as a tool to “edit,
refine, error-check, or otherwise improve” content that you created.
Amazon is not making these disclosures of AI-generated content public as
of the last edit of these guidelines, but we hope they will change this
policy in the future.
- Use
the Authors Guild’s Human
Authored Certification mark for books that contain no AI-generated
text as a way to let readers know it was entirely human written. Readers
will appreciate knowing.
- Respect
the rights of other writers when using generative AI technologies,
including copyrights, trademarks, and other rights, and do not use
generative AI to copy or mimic the unique styles, voices, or other
distinctive attributes of other writers’ works in ways that harm the
works. (Note: doing so could also be subject to claims of unfair
competition or infringement).
- Thoroughly
review and fact-check all content generated by AI systems. As of now, you
cannot trust the accuracy of any factual information provided by
generative AI. Be aware and check for potential biases in the AI output,
be they gender, racial, socioeconomic, or other biases that could
perpetuate harmful stereotypes or misinformation.
- “Fine-tuning”
an AI model on your own work to generate new material (e.g. a new book in
a series, a new book in their own style) arguably raises fewer ethical
concerns since the expression being generated is based on authors’ own
work rather than the work of others. (Fine-tuning is the process by which
a smaller AI model is created on specific datasets with specific
functionalities to work with a foundational LLM.) That being said, the
“fine-tuning” is done on top of a foundational large language model that
in all likelihood was trained and developed on mass copyright
infringement. Further, as an ethical matter, we believe that disclosure of
AI use is still warranted when you input your own work to fine-tune AI in
order to create something in your own style.
- Show
solidarity with and support professional creators in other fields,
including voice actors and narrators, translators, illustrators, etc., as
they also need to protect their professions from generative AI uses. If
you choose to use AI to generate cover art, illustrations, be mindful of
the impact of generative AI on their peers in the creative industries.
Many image models are built using unlicensed pictures and artwork, though
there are exceptions, such as Adobe Firefly, which use licensed images for
training data. Similarly, while many voice models are built on unlicensed
recordings, Amazon, Audible and other audiobook platforms are using
licensed digital “voice replicas” of actors, ensuring that the narrators
get paid. If you are going to use an AI to create cover art or generate an
audiobook, it is better to use an AI program or service that uses licensed
content, as opposed to one that is built on copyright infringement.
- Assert
your rights in your contract negotiations with publishers and platforms.
We have drafted a
model clause that authors and agents can use in their
negotiations that prohibit the use of an author’s work for training AI
technologies without the author’s express permission. Many publishers are
agreeing to this restriction, and we hope this will become the industry
standard. Keep in mind, however, that this clause is only intended to
apply to the use of an author’s work to train AI, not to prohibit
publishers from using AI to perform common tasks such as proofing,
editing, or generating marketing copy. As expected, publishers are
starting to explore using AI as a tool in the usual course of their
operations, including editorial and marketing uses, so they may not agree
to contractual language disclaiming AI use generally. Those types of
internal, operational uses are very different from using the work to train
AI that can create similar works or to license the work to an AI company
to develop new AI models. The internal, operational uses of AI don’t raise
the same concerns of authors’ works being used to create technologies
capable of generating competing works.