The authors of The Thursday Murder Club, Slow Horses and A Pale View of Hills are among nearly 10,000 writers supporting a major protest against the use of AI.
Richard Osman, Mick Herron and Kazuo Ishiguro are three of the highest profile writers to author ’empty’ book Don’t Steal This Book, which is the basis for the protest, which is being held at the London Book Fair (LBF) this week in the UK via a booth that looks out over the event.
The book features the names of all the authors, numbering near 10,000, followed by a series of empty pages, which protest organizer Ed Newton-Rex told Deadline symbolizes the future for novel writing if large-language artificial intelligence models continue to scrape their work.
Copies of the book were being distributed across LBF ahead of a vital UK government report on the economic impact of AI in the UK next week. Creatives from the book, TV and film worlds all share the same concerns around AI over copyright and IP theft, but the publishing industry appears to be taking the firmest action.
Deadline
“We’re releasing this protest book today,” said Newton-Rex. “It’s by 10,000 authors and it is totally empty except for the list of author names behind it, which runs to 88 pages. We’re all protesting the theft of our books by AI companies to train their models.
“We’re also urging the UK government not to legalize this massive exploitation, which they are considering doing.”
Newton-Rex began his career in AI, working in Silicon Valley and building up his own AI music composition business, Jukedeck, which was eventually sold to TikTok parent ByteDance. After roles at other AI companies, he became disillusioned with how AI companies were behaving towards creative intellectual property and went on to found ethical AI company Fairly Trained.
A message on the Don’t Steal This Book website reads: “The UK government must not legalise book theft to benefit AI companies. AI companies are building their products by copying millions of books without permission or payment.
“The UK government is considering legalising this large-scale theft. We urge them to rule this out. AI companies should pay for books, like everyone else. If they don’t, this is what we’ll be left with: empty pages, writers without pay, and readers deprived of the next book they’ll love.
