Maureen Johnson
@maureenjohnson

Authors: we need to stand up with the actors. AI is ALREADY HERE in our work. I just spoke to a Very Famous Author who has to remain nameless for legal reasons. They are held up in a contract negotiation because a Major Publisher wants to train AI on their work.

This person will talk publicly when they can. They can't right now. But you see what this means, and what's already going on. If we don't support other artists, we're toast.

I have their permission to talk about this as a blind item. Seriously. The alarms are ringing right now.

There are already services training AI on our books. This is an attempt by one of the Big Publishers to codify this into a contract. And I repeat, this person is a tentpole of publishing. So this can, and almost certainly will, happen to us all.

We need to know from agents if they are seeing this on other contracts. And we have to get serious about unionizing as authors.

I'm really not fond of ringing alarms or freaking out. It's just that the moment is here. It's already here. And we need to--every single one of us in publishing--every author, agent, editor--need to get together on this right now or our whole art and industry goes up in smoke.

We have to deal with this immediately in our contracts, in our work being fed to AI online. And then we need an Authors Union NOW.