“If you’re concerned about what AI means for the future of creative writing, you’ve come to the right place”.
Publishing is one of many industries feeling existentially threatened by the widescale adoption of AI technologies. This project seeks to ‘write’ that wrong.
Writing the Wrongs of AI sets out to provide a platform for writers, publishers and others in the literary ecosystem to share experiences and opinions, to provide them with expert advice, and to use the power of language to play with ways to reclaim human agency in an age of AI.
The project addresses how technologies such as ChatGPT impact on the agency, creativity and livelihood of human authors. Generative AI companies rely on vast databases of text to train their systems. Texts are often scraped from open sources on the internet, but can also include the copyrighted work of published authors who did not consent to their copyrighted words being used to feed machine learning algorithms and to produce new content and new forms of value.
Although legal actions are being initiated around the globe, it is clear that any changes to legislation or indeed compensation will take years. Yet authors and publishers need answers and options now.
In collaboration with the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Writing the Wrongs of AI project brings together poets, authors, playwrights, translators, publishers and more in order to share experiences, to interact with legal and technical experts, and to ultimately workshop ideas for analogue and/or digital strategies or interventions which might playfully or substantially challenge, subvert, and indeed work with AI in order to raise awareness and skills, with a view to securing the creative and economic future not only of authors, but of the whole publishing industry.
In a series of workshops which took place in Edinburgh in May-June 2024, WWAI participants debated key issues around AI and the creative industries. On a micro level this included fears of AI taking jobs from creatives, and ethical issues around copyright, plagiarism and remuneration. On a more macro level, discussions engaged with philosophical and economic arguments around creativity and originality, as well as the environmental costs of AI and its exploitation of outsourced workers.
The aim of the workshops was not only to exchange knowledge, but also to encourage participants to harness their collective talents in imagining a series of creative interventions which might expose the workings and implications of generative AI models, while also pushing back against the power they wield.
Writing the Wrongs of AI is funded by the Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) program, with funds from the Arts and Humanities Research Council grant number AH/X007146/1, and is partnered with the Edinburgh International Book Festival (EIBF) as non-academic stakeholder on the project.
BRAID is dedicated to integrating Arts and Humanities research more fully into the Responsible AI ecosystem, as well as bridging the divides between academic, industry, policy and regulatory work on responsible AI.
Support for the WWAI workshops was also gratefully received from the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) research and events programs.
Several outputs from the project will be showcased at the Edinburgh Book Festival 10-25th August 2024. More details and tickets here.
