Great news, folks!
But you already knew that, right?
It's why you've got so many books on your shelves,
and why you're always in the middle of a new novel.
It's why you have your favorite authors
(pleasepleaseplease tell me I'm one of them)
and why you ask friends about theirs too.
Okay, so now I'm going to blow your mind:
How would you feel
if you could no longer read
a book from your favorite author?
I don't mean an AI facsimile.
I mean something that sprang from the wonderful mind of someone whose author's voice resonates with you;
an author who backs up the lyricism of their phrases with memories of an event, or research of a place or an era.
I ask this because this morning I received a survey sent by
an author trade association of which I'm a member.
It asked whether I would consider licensing my books
to teach Artificial Intelligence to emulate my author's voice.
Um… NO.
As a creator, why the heck would I or any author
want some algorithmic stew of zeros and ones to even attempt to emulate the one thing that makes me different from every other author: the characters I create, the subjects I write about, and the process—the essence—in which I make my stories?
This goes for anyone who weaves tales
or beautiful tapestries, or makes music or sings songs
or write poetry, or plays, or act in them
or put paint on paper or canvas or walls
or sculpt stone or fuse glass or ceramics into something that stops someone somewhere in their tracks, awestruck by what they read, or see, or hear.
The proof: we still read Mark Twain, Fredrick Douglass, and Edith Wharton.
We also read Michael Crighton, Jane Austen, and Tom Clancy.
Those who want to monetize AI must do it with our words. And our faces. And our visions of different worlds—
Ones of our making.
I would not sell my soul.
Nor would I sell my words to be copied, for eternity, by some computer algorithm.
I mean, come on already—
my writing comes from my soul.
Authors are creators.
Readers buy our books because
they fall in love with our author’s voices.
They appreciate that a human created
something that touched them.
If you take away the human,
you take away the reason
the reader wants our stories.
It’s why we have favorite authors
and go to their book signings.
It’s why we cry when we hear they have passed on.
It’s why we hold onto their books for a lifetime.
AI can't keep readers alive.
Only readers will do that.
So, here's what I wrote back:
"We write from our imaginations,
which was formed by our personal knowledge, memories, hopes, dreams, fears, and vision of a world,
be it beautiful, scary, sad, or happy.
AI can't kill the reason we writers exist.
All it will do is minimize our income for making it.
I pray humanity rejects AI works in all creative forms:
books, art, music, plays, whatever.
We creators won’t go away.
You won’t stop humans from creating stories.
We’ll keep telling them—
but without those who wish to steal them from us."
In 2018, James Rollins wrote CRUCIBLE,
