Considerations for Creators Interested in Using AI Generated Content

Getting PublishedThe Craft of Writing and Illustrating for ChildrenThe Publishing Industry

Oct 4

I’ve been writing about AI a lot recently, and after my Escape from the Enchanted Castle experiment, I wanted to be sure to share some caveats and guidelines for authors (or illustrators) interested in using AI generated content in their traditionally published work.

Key things to know:

AI will not automatically check or tell you if it is plagiarizing (though some AI programs will charge an additional fee to check itself for plagiarized work). You run the risk of including plagiarized work in your text, which could expose you to legal and public reputation issues.
AI will create “mirages” - information presented as fact that is not actually true. Bluntly, AI will make crap up.
The biases of all the information fed into AI could affect the content produced. This could include underlying misogyny, racism, homophobia, and other bigotries. (In other words, I don’t expect AI to produce a misogynistic tirade out of the blue, but it could, for example, amplify the number of women seen in the kitchen in pieces of work based on the number of times it saw that in the historical content it is being fed, reinforcing that as a “woman’s role”.)
Contract language is being negotiated within agencies and the major publishers regarding the author/creator’s use of AI and the publisher’s use of AI. If you use AI to generate work without notifying your publisher, you could find yourself in breach of contract. Be absolutely clear about what your contract says regarding AI created content if you are going to use it in your work.
At this point, the courts are still catching up to the technology. Right now, it seems the consensus is that AI-created work is not copyrightable, and publishers will not want to pay for a work that they cannot protect/enforce the copyright on. These things could change as more cases are brought before the court and rulings are made.

This post was written in October, 2023. I’m sure six months from now, there will be more to know and more to consider.