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By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Human Culture Should Be Protected and Valued’
As internationally observed dates on the calendar go, April 23 is overused. It’s World Book and Copyright Day; World Book Day in the United Kingdom and Ireland; Canada Book Day; International Creator Day; the Shakespeare-de Cervantes-de la Vega deaths commemoration; the eve of Earth Day; and there’s more.
This year, one of the things that got past many of us in relation to UNESCO‘s World Book and Copyright Day was an interesting manifesto statement issued by three prominent organizations.
Titled A Call for Transparency Regarding AI-Generated Books, this document was released by three major organizations in international publishing: the Federation of European Publishers (FEP), the European Writers’ Council (EWC), and the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations (CEATL).
This statement looks at something all but forgotten for the moment in the cluster of issues that hover around artificial intelligence: machine-made products.
A top line for the statement is: Protect Human-Created Books: Label AI-generated products and reserve the application of any cultural public funding to work created by humans.
‘Helping Citizens To Develop Critical Thinking’
Although there has been substantial interest and effort put into the issue of how and when to label an audiobook with an automated voice as such, there seems to be less interest or concern at this point in the machine-‘writing’ developments of AI, not least under the huge and pressing overhang of unremunerated use of copyrighted content by large language models.
Especially as members of parliament in the United Kingdom are headed for a data bill vote next week that may well bring new focus and understanding of where the raging debate is in London and what it could mean for the protection of that regime’s copyright.
Nevertheless, the three key calls in the statement issue for World Book and Copyright Day by these three significant organizations are:
- “Developing a robust mechanism for transparency around AI-generated products appearing similar to books, therefore confusing for the public, based on properly identified responsibilities, for better protection of consumers, readers, authors, and other rights holders;
- “Taking special measures to be sure that EU public funding from programs devoted to culture (such as Creative Europe) cannot benefits coders, or GAI companies when it comes to AI-generated products similar to books. This includes, but is not limited to, studying grants, residencies or travel programmes, writing or translation grants, publishing grants, and any kind of publicly funded cultural awards and prizes (we recommend specifying this in the rules of the awards); and
- “Deploying advocacy initiatives and training programs at the EU level to promote better awareness among consumers and readers of what constitutes a cultural work and what can be determined to be a scam product or a non-human compilation.”
In a conclusion the three organizations write, “The European Union must set an example on how human culture should be protected and valued, and uphold the fundamental role that books play in protecting democracy, fostering empathy, and freedom of speech, and helping citizens to develop critical thinking as well as to enjoy a quality source of entertainment and education.”
Here is the document in full, at the Federation of European Publishers site.
More from Publishing Perspectives on artificial intelligence and world publishing is here, more on copyright is here, more on the freedom to publish is here, and, more on publishing in Europe is here.