Settlement won’t fix the problem

It’s a cliché that the book is always better than the movie, but that’s what our household thought as we watched Netflix’s version of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society.

The redeeming features, aside from beautiful Guernsey views and costuming, were at the end. As the credits scrolled, we heard audio clips of the literary society, discussing favourite pieces of literature. We heard about Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, and our favourite, A.A. Milne’s “When I was one.” My 14-year-old grinned. We concluded this was the best part. “This is what the movie should have been about.”

He’s right. Some published reviews agreed, although only a few reviewers had read the book by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, too.

This experience epitomizes what creatives — authors, illustrators and their publishers — are up against with the development of artificial intelligence. A social media post from a well-known illustrator encouraged anyone with published work to Google the Atlantic Weekly’s AI watchdog, which let authors know if their books had been scraped by AI. A recent court case with Anthropic, one of the AI companies involved (others include Meta), is offering a court-ordered settlement to those whose books were used to harvest material to build AI engines such as Claude or ChatGPT.

I immediately went to the AI watchdog search and learned that two of my books were scraped for their content. That meant, in theory, that I’m eligible to be part of the claims settlement. I completed online forms, hoping I had the right information to make a claim. Otherwise, my work and my intellectual property just serves as free fodder for the AI machine, which it took without permission.

The process of losing one’s intellectual property hasn’t been a surprise. For years, I’ve seen people illegally uploading my books, or smaller bits of copyrighted material, like knitting designs, onto the web. These individuals say they’re “sharing” with a friend, much the way one might have loaned a book or a pattern in person.

Unfortunately, instead of passing along a legally purchased hard copy to share with one friend, these online platforms illegally ‘share’ with many thousands.

Most authors never earn much in royalties, as they earn little per book sale, usually less than a dollar. Further, if the author received an advance on sales, before the book was published, it’s possible that they’ll never sell enough copies to result in further royalties, as the author owes the publisher until the advance is earned back through sales. Imagine thousands of “free” e-distributions of their books, robbing authors of any financial benefit from their work.

The Anthropic claims settlement indicates that authors’ books deemed legitimate will receive compensation. That amount is about US$3,000 a book. Today’s creatives who sell their intellectual property also inadvertently fuel AI, which may cheat them out of their jobs.

As additional proof, I cruised online job boards and LinkedIn to see where it suggested I apply. Over time, freelance work has morphed. My feed used to involve paying writing, teaching or editing work, interspersed with literary “volunteer” opportunities. Then, I was clicking through job adverts with great hourly pay, until I read the descriptions. These suggested the work would teach AI how to improve its writing. Now, those same AI gigs fill my feed, but they pay just slightly better than minimum wage.

AI has devalued the work of writers. As a response, some freelancers boast that they spend their time editing AI to make it look more realistic. They claim AI usage allows them to “write” more in a day. Others swear off AI but lose work because the editors can’t tell what’s real and what’s artificially produced.

Perhaps we enjoyed those sweeping Guernsey landscapes and costumes when we watched a movie based on a beloved book.

However, we realized that a regurgitated movie version that changes the details, deletes complexity and catches only its spirit fails us. We still want to hear the words and discussion of real authors, music performed live by musicians and to see art made by human artists. Yes, technology offers many short cuts, but AI, like autotune, might rip away our humanity and stunt our intellectual property in the process.

Don’t get me wrong. If the claims settlement comes to fruition, I’ll cash those cheques, but it’s no free lunch, either. This solution doesn’t offer a financially viable future for creators like writers and illustrators to make a living, too.

Joanne Seiff, a Winnipeg author, has been contributing opinions and analysis to the Free Press since 2009.