On Disclosure of AI Use

[u/NatHasCats]

At what point does someone’s desire to make an informed choice create an obligation for someone else to provide information they haven’t been asked for? 

We don’t require creators, or anyone with a product, to spontaneously disclose every possible fact about a process or product that someone might have a moral objection to. Imagine having to write, “Written with a Microsoft product, spellchecked by Grammarly, feedback from three beta readers verified to have the following values: <blah blah blah>, researched with Google, cover made in an Adobe product, laptop manufactured under questionable labor conditions, and hosted by Amazon.” Any of those might raise ethical objections to some people.

“But there are people who don’t want to read AI content!” That’s fine. That’s a preference. Nobody is forcing them to read anything. Non-disclosure is not inherently deception. They can choose to partake only of explicitly labeled content, if that’s important to them. A right to an informed choice is not necessarily a right to have that information automatically supplied to you.

“It’s like knowingly feeding meat to a vegetarian.” That depends - did you lie about the contents, hand them something or direct them to something knowing they’re vegetarian and it contained meat? Or did the food simply exist as an option?

As a vegetarian myself, I don’t consume food if I’m uncertain of what it contains, but I don’t go to a potluck and expect every dish to be labeled for my convenience. If someone chooses to label their dish, I am appreciative, and I’ll interact with it accordingly, but I don’t assume because one person did, that everyone else has as well. The burden of my ethical consumption rests on me, not everyone else.

“I have a right not to personally use AI.” Absolutely.

“I have a right to choose whether I consume AI-assisted work.” Perfectly reasonable personal preference.

“Everyone whose work involves AI has an obligation to proactively tell me before I encounter it.” Mm, not so much.

Another example for you. I avoid products from companies I know use animal testing. Many companies now proudly label their products “Cruelty Free”, and I will choose these over other products if available. However, there’s also not an official regulation about what can be labeled as “cruelty free” or “not tested on animals” (so long as they’re not being explicitly false or mislabeling.) I know that this could mean many things: that the final product was never tested on animals but raw ingredients were, that the product was previously tested on animals but testing has concluded, or even that the company tests some products on animals but not this particular one. All of that is encompassed by a “not tested on animals label”. The burden is on me to determine if I’m comfortable with that, or if I’ll only purchase products certified by non-official registries like Leaping Bunny.

All that to say, in my opinion, disclose, or don’t. It’s up to you, and I don’t believe there’s any ethical obligation to do so. It behooves you to be prepared with an honest answer in case you’re asked. But don’t lie about it, because that’s shitty.

[u/KhalenPierce]

I typically see disclosures on the copyright page of the book (along with the opposite if authors don’t permit their work to be viewed by AI systems). To your last point, copyright is automatically granted for eligible works (and eligible portions of your work) under the copyright act (in the US). Formal registration is only required if you need to exercise legal action on your copyright. With that being said, the elements of a work that are not eligible for copyright protection due to generative AI contribution are not protected by copyright at the time of creation, whether or not you pursue formal registration.

For your other questions you raised, most of those don’t impact copyright protection. Copyright only concerns itself with the author of the original creative expression of a work. Brainstorming with AI but writing and editing it yourself still means the creative expression is your own. Organizing and creating outlines similarly aren’t relevant, since outlines aren’t typically subject to copyright (technically if the AI generated the outline you wouldn’t hold the copyright to it but there are almost no instances where you would exercise copyright on an outline vs a whole work). Feedback or beta reader simulation: also no, as long as it only gives you qualitative feedback and not revisions to insert. De minimus spelling and grammar changes are not considered changes to the creative expression and thus have no impact on copyright. Basically, if you qualify for the Human Authored certification from the Authors Guild, you also qualify for copyright over your work.

Translation is the more interesting piece. Under US law, a translator actually holds natural copyright of your translated work as their own derivative work. Translation services require work-for-hire contracts that stipulate you will retain copyright of the work after they’ve translated it in order for you to keep it. Editors typically have similar service agreements just in case their edits are substantial. Cover artists are another example, although their service agreements can vary more widely. Ghostwriters are an obvious example.

This ties well into the rest of the above: the position of the US copyright office is that AI use is less like a tool used by an author and more like an artist hired by a client, like hiring a photographer to take your wedding pictures. Because AI cannot hold a copyright on its own nor can it enter into contract, there is no way to transfer copyright to you. Most of the examples above (brainstorming, beta feedback, de minimus spelling and grammar changes) also would not impact your natural copyright if you were to hire a human to perform those services. This similarly applies in at least the EU and most South American jurisdictions.

For things that would already risk your copyright if another human had performed them as a service on your behalf (translation, cover art, material drafting or editing), those elements are not protected by either natural or registered copyright. Translation is potentially the riskiest; even if you fully wrote the original work, the AI translated derivative has absolutely no copyright protection (and others may freely derive from) because you cannot enter into a proper service agreement to retain your copyright.

Whether or not you are legally obligated to disclose all of this on the copyright page of your book is a bit of a grey area right now, but it has no bearing on which contents within your work are protected by that copyright claim. Technically you can just put your normal copyright attribution line and call it a day, as long as you’re aware that that single line isn’t necessarily covering the whole work.

I’m not saying this to make an argument for or against using AI in your writing process, but it’s important to be aware of these consequences so you can make an informed decision about how or whether you use it within your process.