Artificial intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence has emerged as a dominant new technology, powering products and services and attracting sizeable investments. However, the large language models underpinning these systems are developed using vast amounts of existing content, including copyright works which are being used without consent, credit or compensation.

We believe that the status quo does not serve writers’ interest and campaign to ensure that technological developments do not infringe on the rights and livelihoods of creators.

Ensuring that AI does not undermine human creators is one of our biggest priorities, but we understand that many of you may have little experience of the subject. So we have brought together all of our resources to help you better understand the issue and our work in this area.

Our principles for AI and authors

We believe that AI has the potential to benefit authors and support their creativity, but only if the technology develops in a way that rejects exploitation and recognises its reliance on the works of authors to function. For this to become a reality, we need an effective and appropriate policy framework.

We have outlined a set of principles that must be considered in any future policy decisions. The principles are intended to be general and not restricted to any particular technology, which means they will continue to be relevant as existing technologies develop and new technologies emerge.

You can read these principles in full here.

Generative AI licenses

We are currently exploring two potential licensing options to pay you when your works are used by AI:

A licence permitting content from written works (books/ articles etc) to be used to PROMPT AI systems
A licence permitting written works (books/ articles etc) to be used to TRAIN AI systems

You can read more about these licensing options here.