Herb’s Blog, Herbdate 23551 – 1216
I started this post several weeks ago and it was just hanging out in my drafts folder. I usually leave all the tabs open that pertain to what I’m studying until I’m done with the sources but this time they got away. I could spend time digging around in my history and sourcing all my stuff again or I could just tell you that I looked it up and these are my opinions and you are welcome to do the same searching I did. If you wish. If it even interests you as it did me.
Here’s the haps:
I bought a real book a while back and was intrigued by the copyright notice (Yes, I read every little bit and part of a book. At the price they charge for books I can’t afford to let one ISBN escape my notice 😂😉). It reads:
All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief excerpts for the purpose of review. No artificial intelligence technology was used in the any way in writing of this work, and no use may be made of this publication for the training of generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies without express written consent from the author.
Author Sarah Angleton – Paradise on the Pike
I got to wondering about how really big of an issue we were looking at and what was being done about it. In my defense, I have been busier than a vacuum cleaner in a dirt factory and haven’t had a lot of time to do thorough research but while I knew there were a lot of issues related to AI, I wasn’t sure of the level of severity of it. On some of the writer’s forums, people were saying a notice like this isn’t necessary because your work is already protected. Which is true. As soon as you put your creation into any type of tangible form, e.g., blog post, Word document, crayon scribblings, etc., it is protected by copyright. That’s true (in the U.S. anyway. I don’t know about elsewhere. By the way, just so you know, I am not an attorney and I don’t even play one on TV so for real legal advice please contact someone with a clue, thanks.) but I think we should also be diligent. There are way too many people and companies that believe everything on the Internet is free and free game and free to use any old way they please.
One article I read interviewed an author whose name I can’t remember but has 32 books to their credit who said that all someone would have to do is feed all 32 books into an AI and it could pop out her 33rd book by itself. Who needs an author? As I was reading all of these things, friend of this blog, Jacqui Murray, wrote about copyright on the Story Empire website and we discussed AI briefly in the comments. She said she was planning to use such a statement, only more strongly worded, in her next book series. She already uses one on her websites that says:
The content presented in this blog are the result of creative imagination and not intended for use, reproduction, or incorporation into any artificial intelligence training or machine learning systems without prior written consent from the author.
Jacqui Murray
I then found an article on the Author’s Guild, which appears to work with more traditionally published authors, website that also said it was a good idea to place such a statement and their sample said:
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting the author’s [and publisher’s] exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
Author’s Guild
They also recommend editing your robots.txt file to disallow GPTbot. This is a file that you really should handle with care and I plan to do some more research before I dive in.
I have cobbled the following notice together following the examples above and others I have seen, along with the little “No AI” icon and you are more than welcome to use any or all of it as you wish. Or make your own.
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The content of this blog, my website and any other of my works in any other form are my original creation. They are not free to use in any way or form without my express, written license and consent except as provided for by U.S. copyright law. This includes, but is not limited to, use for training of generative artificial intelligence, large language models, and any other technologies past, present, or future which use any part of the work of the author.
I like comments and try to respond to them all if I can: