CEO of OpenAI, Google, Facebook to pay 8,000 as authors

The US Authors Guild has signed an open letter requesting that companies employing intellectual literature for AI training receive authorization, credit, and compensation from the creators. The petition was signed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Google head Sundar Pichai, Meta (Facebook) founder Mark Zuckerberg, and others.

Over 8,000 authors, including Jennifer Egan, Michael Chabon, Louise Erdrich, Jonathan Franzen, Celeste Ng, Nora Roberts, and Ron Chernow, have signed the letter.

In the letter, prominent business leaders are called out by name, including Sam Altman, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Mark Zuckerberg, Emad Mostaque, and Arvind Krishna.

In exploiting writers' works as part of AI systems without their "consent, credit, or compensation," these corporations have been accused of unfairness. The Authors' Guild claims that writers are ultimately responsible for the development of generative AI technologies based on massive language models such as ChatGPT and Bard, which replicate writers' language, tales, and ideas.

The writers have requested just payment for their efforts. The letter states, "You are investing billions of dollars towards research and development of AI technology. Without our writings, AI would be boring and incredibly limiting, thus it's only right that you pay us for utilising them.

They fear for their jobs as a result of the increasing prevalence of AI that can perform their duties. There was a letter sent out that read, "As a result of embedding our writings in your systems, generative AI threatens to damage our profession by flooding the market with mediocre, machine-written books, stories, and journalism based on our work."

The authors' salary has dropped by 40% over the past decade, they stressed further. The letter asks the CEOs to compensate writers appropriately for their previous and current use of work and to seek permission in advance if they intend to exploit copyrighted material.