Over 1,100 authors—including literary heavyweights like Lauren Groff, R.F. Kuang, Lev Grossman, Dennis Lehane, and Geoffrey Maguire—have signed an open letter urging book publishers to draw a firm line on AI: protect human creativity or risk eroding it.
The letter calls out the growing use of artificial intelligence in the publishing industry and asks companies to publicly commit to preserving the role of real humans—especially when it comes to audiobook narration, editorial work, and original writing. One of the most direct demands: “Never release books created by machines.”
“Writers’ work has been stolen,” the letter says bluntly, referencing how AI models have been trained using books without permission or compensation. “Rather than paying writers a small percentage of the money our work makes for them, someone else will be paid for a technology built on our unpaid labor.”
The move comes as tensions mount between creative professionals and tech companies. While authors continue to sue companies like OpenAI and Meta for allegedly scraping books to train large language models, recent court decisions have dealt setbacks to those legal efforts—rulings that have only deepened frustration across the literary world.
The letter also takes aim at industry practices, warning publishers not to quietly downgrade human roles into AI-monitoring jobs, or to replace editorial and creative staff with algorithm-driven tools.
As AI accelerates across industries, authors are making their boundaries clear: storytelling isn’t just a data set. And if publishers want the trust of writers and readers alike, they’ll need to choose transparency—and talent—over automation.
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