As part of my new gig as the SCBWI Metro New York region’s Translator Coordinator, I was invited to the .SCBWI annual conference last weekend. Since the pandemic, the conference has been held virtually or as a hybrid virtual/in-person conference near the organization’s headquarters in Los Angeles. This year, it was totally virtual, from the keynotes to the panels, from the gathering of different interest groups to the one-on-one serendipity meetings. I attended the Translators meet-up, where the SCBWI Translator Coordinator Avery Udagawa introduced me as the newest regional coordinator, six of the seven TCs attended (the coordinator for Japan was on an airplane and thus missed the event), and Eva Apelqvist spoke about the Printz Honor Book (given to outstanding YA books each year) Fire from the Sky, which she translated from Swedish.
I also attended multiple panels, including a fascinating one on AI and copyright in which I hopefully saved another attendee from personal and professional disaster. Authors Guild Director of Policy & Advocacy Umair Kazi spoke about the legal implications of AI — not only the Anthropic payout for scraping millions of copyrighted works to train AI (including my own novels Rogue and Surviving Santiago), but also about the problems writers and illustrators have encountered in using AI to create their own works. In the background was the author whose $2.4 million book deal was cancelled after accusations of using AI to create his debut novel. (He denies the allegations.) Kazi told the attendees that anything that can be copyrighted in the name of a human being cannot be copyrighted if it is entirely or in part created by AI.
Many in attendance were alarmed at the possibility of losing a book deal and having an advance clawed back over accusations of using AI. There’s also the danger of feeding our work into AI models for spell/grammar checking and other shortcuts and having it scraped to train future models. I was so alarmed that I immediately turned off Copilot on my Word program, lest it decide to “improve” my writing automatically. (AI also tried to flag and correct this blog post, and I immediately shut it off as well.) Does using a spell and grammar checker count as using AI? Probably not, but using the program to rewrite an awkward sentence does. How about using AI for historical research? Many do it, but AI has a tendency to hallucinate or offer confusing, contradictory, or inaccurate results. I always check out the sources themselves and in fact found an error in a fact AI fed me when I conducted research for my latest work-in-progress.
Some of the questions hinted at book creators stepping into dangerous territory, and in my new position as Translator Coordinator, I had to get involved. One person in particular was planning to use AI to translate a book they had self-published into a number of other languages that they did not know. They also did not know that translations are usually copyrighted in the name of the translator (unless it’s a work for hire, and then is copyrighted in the name of the publisher). Because translations are copyrighted in each language in the name of the translation who brought them into that language, as well as the author and illustrator, using AI to translate the book will void the copyright. In addition, a person who doesn’t know the language doesn’t know if the translation is accurate. In no case does an AI translation capture the author’s voice and nuance. In fact, a point the other panelists made is that the AI “voice” is an amalgamation of all the voices the program has scraped from decades of world literature, and it does not reflect the voice of each individual creator. The panelists encouraged writers and illustrators to be quirky, to lean into one’s own perspective and individuality, and to reject the conformity imposed by AI models. And to think also about the environmental impact of data centers that are leading to water shortages, rising electricity bills, and shortages of so many things we count on for daily life.
You may ask, then, why did I use AI to help write my letter to the FCC asking the government not to take my local television station off the air. Unlike books, letters to government agencies cannot be copyrighted. In fact, advocacy organizations regularly publish sample letters that people can copy when petitioning the government for redress, our Constitutional right. I don’t have a lot of experience writing a repressive regime when it’s my own repressive regime, as opposed to one located continents and oceans away from my home. So I counted on a wide knowledge base, countless other people over the years who wanted things important to their lives and petitioned regimes that could become quite vindictive when challenged. I don’t need a copyright for my letter. I just need WABC Channel 7 to not be taken off the air.
If you are interested in learning more about the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators and the help they offer to writer, illustrators, and translators at various stages of their career, check out scbwi.org. If you want to read more about AI and its impact and implications for literary creators, the Authors Guild is the best place to start.
