New Startup Aims to Help Publishers License Books to Train AI Models
Welcome to Today in Books, where we report on literary headlines at the intersection of politics, culture, media, and more.
Scribd Co-Founders Introduce Startup to Support AI Licensing for Books
Backed by a $5 million round of seed funding and investments from multiple venture capital firms and author Walter Isaacson, former Scribd co-founders Trip Adler and Jen Singerman have launched an AI licensing company that “makes it simple for authors/publishers to license the AI Rights of their content to AI companies for use in training models and more.” Per its manifesto, Created by Humans (I’m not making that up) aims to “preserve human creativity and make it thrive in the AI era” while offering authors and publishers an additional revenue stream. Publishers Lunch has a terrific deep dive into the service and related issues, but if you’re hoping for specifics, you’ll have to keep waiting, as at present, “the platform is long on promise and short on specifics.” Publishers Weekly offers a slightly rosier take.
Publishing has developed a knee-jerk “no” response to just about anything related to books and AI, and I get it. The big AI companies trained their models on hundreds of thousands of books with zero permission from or payment to authors or publishers. The resulting copyright suits will likely be working their way through the courts for years to come, and folks are both very angry and very scared of the impact generative AI technology may have on books and reading. But—you knew there was going to be a but—this toothpaste isn’t going back in the tube. AI is here, and we would be wise to give real consideration to companies that are trying to address the critical issues of permission and payment.
Yes, Created by Humans’s name is too cute by half, and the product is not yet fully baked, but this is more of a solution than anyone else has offered, and that has to count for something. I’ll be interested in what the service looks like when the details have been sorted and which (if any) of the Big Five will participate.
Whether they utilize outside facilitators like Created by Humans or handle it in-house, publishers need to take concrete steps to reckon with the realities of AI and protect both copyrighted materials and revenue.
Netflix Goes to the Happy Place
Netflix has reportedly optioned Emily Henry’s Happy Place for a series to be produced by Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions. Three of Henry’s previous novels—People We Meet on Vacation, Beach Read, and Book Lovers—are already in development for film. This just leaves Henry’s latest, Funny Story, which came out in April, on the table.
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