The Authors Guild and Created by Humans (CbH) Announce Partnership to Help Authors License Content to AI Companies

From The New York Times:

The Authors Guild, the largest and oldest professional organization for writers in the United States, is teaming with a new start-up, Created by Humans, to help writers license rights to their books to artificial intelligence companies.

The partnership, announced Wednesday, comes as authors and publishers are wrestling with the rapid incursion of artificial intelligence into the book world. The internet is already flooded with books generated by A.I., and sophisticated chatbots can instantly generate detailed summaries of books and spew out material in the voice and style of popular writers.

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Several A.I. companies have already registered interest in licensing book content through the platform, said Trip Adler, the co-founder and chief executive of Created by Humans. Adler declined to name the companies, citing nondisclosure agreements.

“We want to be the company that sticks up for and protects the work of human creators, while also helping them navigate A.I. and profit off it,” said Adler, who previously co-founded and led Scribd, a digital subscription services for books and audio content.

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From the Official Announcement (via Authors Guild)

“Generative AI is here to stay and it does not appear that all the books LLMs have been trained on can be effectively purged. We urgently need to give control back to authors and their publishers, and licensing is the means to accomplish that going forward,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild. “CbH’s platform provides authors who are interested in engaging with AI platforms a way to do so on their own terms, ensuring they have a say in how their work is used and are fairly compensated for it.”

In addition to its litigation and lobbying efforts on AI use of literary works, the Authors Guild is partnering with CbH to help ensure that authors who retain their copyrights are in the driver’s seat when it comes to AI licensing—so that authors can decide if, when, and how AI companies use their works. The platform will open for authors and publishers to register their choices in the fall of 2024 and should be ready to offer licenses to AI companies in early 2025.

The platform offers authors a clear path to control, manage, and monetize their content while giving AI developers access to high-quality, curated written works with the full consent of rights holders.

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