Authors Guild to offer “Human Authored” label on books to compete with AI
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Authors Guild to offer “Human Authored” label on books to compete with AI
The Authors Guild, the professional association representing published novelists and nonfiction writers, is set to offer to its 15,000 members a new certificate they can place directly on their book covers.
About the size of literary award stickers or celebrity book club endorsements adorning the cover art of the latest bestseller, the certificate is a simple, round logo with two boldfaced words inside: “Human Authored.”
As in, written by a human — and not artificial intelligence.
“It isn’t just to prevent fraud and deception,” said Douglas Preston, a bestselling novelist and nonfiction writer and member of the Authors Guild Council. “It’s also a declaration of how important storytelling is to who we are as a species. And we’re not going to let machines elbow us aside and pretend to be telling us stories, when it’s just regurgitating literary vomitus.”
The “human authored” badge is the latest strategy the Authors Guild has pursued to counter the emergence of large language models and their ability to generate an avalanche of text within seconds, a capability some writers fear is an existential threat to the profession. Last year, the Authors Guild led a class-action lawsuit against the generative AI company OpenAI for copyright infringement. It alleged the Microsoft-backed tech giant illegally scraped copyrighted books to train the technology behind ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot.
The Authors Guild hopes the new consumer-facing certificate will help sway human readers to buy the works of human writers, and operate like an organic or fair-trade sticker on grocery items. Authors and publishers will have final say on whether or where to display the badge.
Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says the certificate will serve as an indicator of quality in e-bookstores that have been inundated with AI-generated content, and may be more useful for lower-profile writers than celebrated authors with longstanding audiences.
“I think it is most important in marketplaces like the Kindle marketplace, where you’ll see alot of AI generated books,” said Rasenberger. “The plots are a little weird, there’s duplication.”
While Amazon’s Kindle direct-publishing unit requires authors to disclose to Amazon if the content is AI-generated, the company does not require any consumer-facing disclosure. Amazon does not publicize the number of AI-generated books in it’s bookstore, but several authors have complained about a rise in AI knockoffs.
The Authors’ Guild is the highest-profile organization to pursue a consumer-facing seal signifying that a creative work is not made with AI. The nonprofit Credo 23, launched by the filmmaker and former actress Justine Bateman, offers a stamp to movies and television series that pledge not to use artificial intelligence in any way. A for-profit European startup provides similar certifications for illustrations, translations and even architectural designs.
Such certifications are banking on consumers actually caring that something is made by a fellow human, appealing to ethical misgivings over the way AI scrapes’ artists works without consent or threatens jobs in the creative arts.
“Right now is the time to launch these labels, because people are scared to death of AI,” said Ellis Jones, a sociologist at College of the Holy Cross who researches ethical consumer labeling, like fair trade or animal cruelty-free certifications.
In light of the popularity and profitability of products with ethical certifications, Jones said he can see a certain segment of affluent consumers willing to pay more for human-made work.
“We just have decades of data to show that people are willing to pay enormous premiums for products that they can be certain are more ethical,” said Jones. “The more certain, the higher the premium.”
The problem for the “human authored” label and similar certifications may be in telling with any certainty whether a human or robot was responsible for a creative work.
Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger says when the certification process is officially announced in the next few weeks, writers will not have to submit their manuscripts to AI detection software to receive the “human authored” stamp. The AI verification technology is simply not good enough yet, although she hopes one day it may be.
“We are not going to be able to check upfront whether or not what they’re saying is true,” said Rasenberger. “However, they do have to certify that it is human written.”
The Authors Guild will be relying on other authors and readers to report fraud, and authors may be subject to legal action if they lie about using AI.
A better solution, Rasenberger said, would be federal or state laws mandating that any text generated by artificial intelligence be clearly labeled as such to the end user.
“That is where we really want to get — everything generated by AI says it’s AI-generated,” she said. “We’ve been lobbying nonstop for a a year and a half on that.”
The Authors Guild is still finalizing language on “de minimus” use of artificial intelligence that would be allowable. Spelling and grammar check services that utilize AI likely won’t be barred.
But other, broader uses of generative AI may not be disqualifying, including brainstorming with ChatGPT for the idea of a novel.
“I’m not asking the machine to write it for me,” said Douglas Preston, the writer and Authors Guild Council member. “I think letting the machine in, letting the machine put its foot in the door of my creative mind is OK, but I’m not going to let it into my house and open the refrigerator and let it eat my lunch.”
Preston said he’d personally feel awkward about using AI to help come up with the idea for his next thriller.
But as AI gets more integrated into daily life, it’s possible that authors, readers and consumers in general won’t feel as queasy in the future.
“I still think as most consumers go out shopping, they just sort of accept whatever and don’t worry about it,” said Jones, the Holy Cross sociologist. “But there’s a pushback as well. And so you have the people who are craving the ethics, and the environment, and the integrity, and the authenticity, and the local and independent push back even harder and sort of hunker down even more.”
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