No generative AI training use

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With the increasing use of so-called artificial intelligence, or AI, software there are concerns about its implications for artists, writers, and other content creators. The builders of AI tools train them on huge datasets of information, usually without obtaining the permission of the creators of that material, and almost always without paying for its use. They then offer the public a tool that will ‘write your essay’ or ‘create your picture’ in response to directions you provide.

This behaviour is ethically dubious and definitely harms the prospects of content creators and performers and, inevitably, their audiences. From the point of view of AI developers, a synthetic novel or painting ‘in the style of’ a specific author or artist is just as good as, and cheaper to obtain, than the real thing.

At Moose House, we prefer the real thing. We have added a clause to our contract template to make clear that we will never use the texts of our authors’ books for training UI software without the explicit approval of the author concerned. We consider this position to apply to every book we have already published, and all the cover art and interior illustrations that are a part of them.

The text of the new contract clause is as follows. We define who ‘Author’ is, and what is the ‘Work’, at the start of each contract; ‘Publisher’ is ‘Moose House Publications’.

 

For avoidance of doubt, Author reserves the rights, and Publisher has no rights to, reproduce and/or otherwise use the Work in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies to generate text, including, without limitation, technologies that are capable of generating works in the same style or genre as the Work, unless Publisher obtains Author’s specific and express permission to do so. Nor does Publisher have the right to sub-license others to reproduce and/or otherwise use the Work in any manner for purposes of training artificial intelligence technologies to generate text without Author’s specific and express permission.

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Submission of AI-generated manuscripts

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Moose House publishes works that people living in rural Nova Scotia create, and works about rural Nova Scotia by people living elsewhere.

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We have no problem with writers using a straightforward support tool like 'autocorrect' to help them catch issues in their text. We have no interest in publishing material that a human did not create.