Authors back global charter for ethical use of generative AI
Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, Tracy Chevalier and Kester Brewin are among the writers backing a new global charter on generative AI.
The Charter of Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries sets out how generative AI services — software that can make text, images, audio and video from a prompt — should be deployed to protect and support human creators, according to Publishing Perspectives. The U.K.-based Society of Authors put it together with writers and creative industry organisations from other countries.
It was unveiled at the Creators Emergency Summit in London on 13 October, as reported by The Bookseller. The Society of Authors followed with a website announcement titled ‘Creative industries launch Ethical AI Charter’ on 14 October.
The argument is plain. Policy has not kept up. Anna Ganley, chief executive of the Society of Authors, said: “In the vacuum of any meaningful policy from governments, we have come together to define how generative AI services should be governed to protect and support human creators.”
The charter builds on UNESCO’s 10 core principles of responsible AI. It also includes a commitment to respect the CLEAR framework to protect creators’ livelihoods. The aim, in the charter’s own language, is to balance technological benefits with environmental, social and societal considerations.
It is pitched as a working pledge rather than a legal rule. Authors and publishing stakeholders — a term that here covers agents, publishers and prize bodies, the organisations that award literary prizes — are asked to promise to use generative AI only in a transparent, responsible and ethical way. The Society’s Authors board is chaired by Vanessa Fox O’Loughlin, who writes bestselling crime novels as Sam Blake.
The full text is hosted on the Society of Authors’ website as the ‘Charter of Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries’. It says it aims to guide signatories in the responsible consideration of generative AI technologies in their organisations, meaning how staff choose, disclose and manage such tools.
For anyone who reads rather than makes books, this matters because it touches the supply chain behind the shelf. The charter does not set fees, royalties or contract terms. It lays down a public standard that a writer, an agent, a publisher or a prize can point to when deciding what counts as fair use of the technology.
