I'm sure by now that everyone's heard the news that Meta has stolen millions of books and research papers and used them to train their AI programmes. They did it in full knowledge that this was theft. Staff at Meta discussed obtaining material legally and decided to steal it because it would be quicker and cheaper.
Just about every author I know has been affected. It makes me wonder why we still bother to write when our work is consistently undervalued, taken and used without our consent.
And then I thought back over last week, which was my last set of 'World Book Month' school events. Three days of encouraging children to use my Welsh folktales books as springboards for their own stories.
And I remembered that a few weeks ago, a teacher, Julian Rees, contacted me. He'd come across my Welsh Giants, Ghosts and Goblins, and being a musician and composer as well as a teacher, he'd written a march to go with my stories of the giant Idris's travels around Wales. Here it is, if you're curious.
And, because once I started thinking about this, I found so many examples, I remembered my artist friend, Bonnie Hawkins, painstakingly creating characters inspired by Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, and how I ran a workshop in the art gallery, creating a new 'play for voices' inspired by her artwork.
There is a Welsh word, 'cynefin', which means community, connection, belonging. A coming together of the multiple strands of our environment, our experiences, the people we live alongside. To me, this is how creativity is supposed to work. A story sparking off a piece of music, a play giving rise to a gallery of art, which gives rise to new writing. Creativity connects people together in a way that AI can never do.
This is why I'll continue to write.
And here, in case you need them, are links to the Society of Authors and the Writers' Guild, with advice on what to do if Meta has stolen your work.
https://societyofauthors.org/2025/03/21/the-libgen-data-set-what-authors-can-do/
https://writersguild.org.uk/libgen-database-advice-for-authors/
5 comments:
Moira here. This is well said. They cannot steal everything...Can they?
Lovely to have that piece of music composed!
This is Miriam Halahmy. I quite agree Clare. We can engage with our readers in a way AI can only dream about.
Thank you for the links, Claire. I found out last week that six of my books are on the list and I hope the company involved 'reap as they sow'. They have no conception how much pleasure an author receives from a simple 'Thank you' to a singer songwriter who sent me a song he'd written because he was inspired by my main character... and anything in-between. These are the joys of writing that no one can take away from us. I doubt any of their books will bring the kind of rewards we have.
It's so frustrating because there are decent and necessary applications for AI (such as feeding in large amounts of legally gained data, eg geographical images, and getting it to identify posible historical sites to allow targeted archaeological work.) Stuff that computers can do more efficiently than a human could and that frees up man-hours. Stealing creative works is just... unimaginative. Their applications of AI and their limited view of what is possible with it only shows exactly the way their minds work and what they value. And it's certainly not the work and passion that goes into creating books or art or music. It reminds me of a ghost story I read once about a man who was worried about a fellow composer. He kept sending him pieces that were accomplished and complex, and sort of beautiful, but they just felt wrong or evil in some way. (It turns out the composer was being possessed by the ghost of a violent, frustrated musician) anyway I'm not quite sure what my point was but maybe that AI is like the possessed composer - he's 'creating' stuff but it's not his and it feels wrong, because it's coming out twisted (and not just because the ghost was evil).
Post a Comment