Intellectual property attorney tells Press Club members artificial intelligence won’t immediately replace authors
Artificial intelligence will not immediately replace authors, according to Eric von Vorys, an intellectual property attorney and AI expert with the Shulman Rogers law firm, who was the guest speaker at the Nov. 9 virtual meeting of the National Press Club’s Independent Authors Group.
“AI is not anywhere close to taking over your jobs,” von Vorys assured the group. That’s because generative AI, which can create text, images, and other forms of media, has built-in limitations that offer some protections for authors.
The emerging technology “is limited to whoever is programming it and whatever is in the databases that it is drawing from. It is completely analytical. It follows certain rules in the programming and cannot create its own rules….AI puts words together. But writing is more than that. It is pacing, it is timing, it is storytelling. And that's what you authors bring to the table,” von Vorys said.
AI does not understand humor, sarcasm, or emotions, von Vorys observed. “Humans, on the other hand, are full of emotions, and human authors can use those to write very effectively,” he said.
Another reason authors can rest easy for now is that “there are no copyright protections” for the content AI generates. “Anything that AI creates is automatically in the public domain,” von Vorys said.
Current versions of AI have their place and there are ways in which authors can use the technology to their advantage, including generating ideas, assisting with research, and proofreading, von Vorys said.
The Independent Authors Group is an informal forum within the Club for independently-published authors to discuss the business of writing and share successes and challenges with regard to the publishing, marketing, and distribution of their books. The group meets via Zoom on the second Thursday of each month at 9:30 a.m. Any Club member interested in joining the group may inquire with Jody Beck at [email protected].