Large Language Models Will Crush The Future Human Competitors Of Established Authors Suing Over AI Chatbots

// The first thing I wrote that I actually got paid for was a short story. It was published in a science fiction anthology (kids, that’s a book, like printed on paper) about 15 years ago. I was paid by the word, and the pay was very modest. I was delighted.

Like every aspiring writer, when I got paid for the first time, I already had a desk drawer full of unpublished swill: letters, academic papers, and half-finished manuscripts. Success begets success, however, and only a couple years after that first short story, I had a well-paying freelance gig ghostwriting articles for law firm websites. I wrote thousands of them over the course of several years and several different roles. Although now I wouldn’t be able to even recognize the vast majority of these articles as my own writing, there are still a few examples that I look back on with nostalgia, perhaps even pride.

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Today, well, you have a pretty good idea of what I’m writing, considering you’re reading some of it presently. I’m not too worried about artificial intelligence replacing me at this stage — its guardrails would never let it risk offending as many people as I have.

But AI large language models very well could wind up taking over things like my tentative forays into fiction and my subsistence work on law firm websites. If this happens, it will crush a new generation of prospective authors who are going to give up or who will need to get a real job before having the opportunity to hone their craft.

Ironically, this will probably actually help many of the established writers who are now suing OpenAI, Microsoft, and other tech companies with claims that their copyrighted material has been misused to train large language models like ChatGPT. Prominent authors who have lent their names to one proposed class action lawsuit include Jonathan Franzen, George R.R. Martin, and John Grisham.

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No offense to John Grisham if he happens to be reading this — ah, sir, I recognize you have done very well for yourself and that way more people (and machines) will read your stuff than will ever read my stuff, please don’t crush me on Twitter or X or whatever — but nobody reads John Grisham novels for the quality of the prose. People read John Grisham novels because they’re written by John Grisham.

ChatGPT or some other large language model probably could someday produce, after a good editor slashed through the manuscript, a fairly serviceable John Grisham-style novel. What AI cannot conjure out of thin air is his brand, personality, and loyal fan base.

So, someone like John Grisham is actually probably going to benefit from the rapid advances we’re seeing in chatbots and other types of generative AI. While a machine can’t supplant him, some new up-and-coming human author of fresh modern legal thrillers perhaps could. Folks who might have a chance at that are the sort whose nascent writing careers are going to wither on the vine thanks to large language models.

Of course, there are other paths to authorship beyond years of toil as a copywriter. For instance, Jonathan Slaght, the author of one of my favorite books “Owls of the Eastern Ice,” says he became an author of popular nonfiction only incidentally because of the work he was doing to become a scientist. Whatever the capabilities of artificial intelligence, at least some human beings will still develop as talented writers for their own, possibly non-economic reasons, through the distinctly human qualities of grit and determination.

And none of this is to say that authors at any level shouldn’t receive some kind of royalty when large language models train on their work. If a human reads your book, you certainly hope that person learns something from it and goes on to use that knowledge in future endeavors; just like an author generally gets compensated for that through book sales, shouldn’t an author also receive payment when a machine does the same thing only far more quickly and efficiently?

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Advanced AI chatbots like ChatGPT will disrupt the talent pipeline in the literary world. Those big-name authors suing over it will be fine though, and they might even benefit as AI stifles their rising human competition.

Hopefully most of these powerhouse writers recognize the dynamics of this situation and are suing somewhat altruistically so as to not pull the ladder up after themselves in front of all the developing literary talent out there. I would hate to think it’s merely a cash grab for a few already wealthy people.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].

Topics

AI Legal Beat, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Authors, ChatGPT, Jonathan Wolf, Large Language Models, Technology