This week, the Society of Authors, the UK trade union for writers, illustrators and literary translators of all stripes, published their Charter on the Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries. 

Within hours, the Society of Authors was engulfed in flames like a mill at the end of a Frankenstein movie.

The Charter asserts the following: 

• Promote responsible and ethical use of generative AI services
• Comply with the evolving best practice recommendations on AI ethics and governance
• Where AI is used, it is used for good
• Work mindfully in relation to impact

It looks like the Society really, really honestly and for true though it was taking a strong stand against Gen AI and LLM’s on behalf of writers everywhere.

But the members didn’t see “Where AI is used, it is used for good” and “Work mindfully in relation to impact” as the ironclad bulwarks they seemingly were intended to be.

Writers took to Bluesky, Threads, and even AI-agnostic LinkedIn to express their outrage:

Writers seem to want their trade organizations to push back – and push back hard – against Gen AI tech. The Charter does go into greater detail in its full text, but it does take the approach that content theft at scale is a technology we all have to live with and get used to – a compromise basically.

The fact that the Charter was announced without extensive consultation with members hasn’t engendered trust either. 

And just using the word “AI”, which can mean a dozen different types of technology doesn’t help. It’s very imprecise writing. C minus.

The Charter was announced at the inaugural Creators Emergency Summit, a London event produced by media biz Gen AI expert and ¡AU! contributor Graham Lovelace. So it’s not exactly coming out of a Silicon Valley think-tank. But it is cringeworthy to see how out of touch the Society is with its own membership. And with the mood of the creative industries as a whole. 

Society of Authors Chief Executive Anna Ganley came back with a damage-control post:

In the blog post that followed, CEO Ganley said: “Yesterday, we shared our Charter of Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries on social media, and I am sorry that we clearly failed to communicate its purpose.”

Ganley underlines that the Society hasn’t changed its stance on AI, which and says “We understand generative AI to be harmful to the creative industries, to individual writers’ livelihoods, and to the shared environment.”

However, she notes, many companies in the publishing industry are now using Gen AI, whether their authors like it or not. Ganley sees the Charter as a means to encourage “public, transparent commitments from all publishers about whether, how and where generative AI is being used.”

“We need every organisation within the industry to play their part. The Charter, therefore, is intended to promote urgent discussion so that those of us who vehemently oppose the use of generative AI can influence others to act responsibly and to respect the rights and interests of all creatives, including authors.”

The Charter will be discussed at the Society’s AGM on November 19 and the Society invites members to submit feedback to its public affairs email here.

An investigation at Wired earlier this month showed how publishers who publicly expressed support for authors rights were using Gen AI on the low-down for pressbehind the scenes.

According to Wired: “Publishers are now using LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT to email literary agents, write publicity and back-cover copy, design cover art, and generate marketing materials, often at the direction of their executives.”

The “practical approach” – aka we must reform AI, not resist it – appears in the attitude of execs whose attitude is often at odds with their employees.

Wired: “This spring, when some HarperCollins employees expressed concerns about the legal, ethical, and environmental impacts of AI at one of these brainstorming sessions, a person leading the meeting dismissed their qualms as ‘the cost of doing business,’”

AI is not inevitable. It’s a shortcut technology with well-connected billionaire backers. But it’s not the weather. Treating it as inevitable might mean you’re prioritizing machines over humans. Which is fine. Nothing wrong with that, if that’s your jam. A lot of people do that. But don’t be upset when we humans resist.