Most about language, communication and culture. International affairs
torsdag den 10. oktober 2024
Declarations, statements and letters on AI, translation, writing and copyright
Declarations, statements and letters on AI, translation, writing, copyright and tools
Joint Declaration from Danish Rights Organizations
Human Creativity Must Not Be Undermined by AI
(Some texts are translated from Danish and Norwegian into English by Copilot, and postedited by myself.)
Human creativity has always been a cornerstone of Denmark’s cultural identity, and the creative work of artists enriches our society and shapes our worldview and values in countless ways.
However, human culture is now being significantly challenged by providers of artificial intelligence (AI)—particularly generative AI services. It is our responsibility as a society to preserve human artistic expression, and one of the most crucial tools to support that goal is copyright legislation.
The Impact of AI on creators: Joint statement to the new EU Commission
On Dec 4, CEATL, together with 12 other authors’ and performers’ organisations representing hundreds of thousands of European cultural and creative workers signed a joint statement to Executive Vice-President Virkunnen and Commissioner Micallef of the European Commission on the Impact of AI on the European creative community. The letter points out that the AI Act fails to adequately protect the value of their members’ cultural works. Link to CEATL website/. Continue:
Open letter to Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for Tech Sovereignty,
Security and Democracy and to Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture
and Sport:
The impact of Artificial Intelligence on Europe’s creative communities
Facing today’s reality and paving the way for the next EU policy agenda ... Link to European Writers/.
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OTTIAQ's position on artificial intelligence in translation. Translators' order cautions public about risks of using artificial intelligence for translation, link/
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Open letter to Veen Bosch & Keuning in regards to the usage of AI to translate books into English language, link/
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No-one left behind, no language left behind, no book left behind _ CEATL
Since the beginning of 2023, the spectacular evolution of artificial intelligence, and in particular the explosion in the use of generative AI in all areas of creation, has raised fundamental questions and sparked intense debate. While professional organisations are coordinating to exert as much influence as possible on negotiations regarding the legal framework for these technologies (see in particular the statement co-signed by thirteen federations of authors’ and performers’ organisations), CEATL has drafted its own statement detailing its stance on the use of generative AIs in the field of literary translation. Link/
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‘It gets more and more confused’: can AI replace translators?
A Dutch publisher has announced that it will use AI to translate some of its books – but those in the industry are worried about the consequences if this becomes the norm, link/
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AI, artificial intelligence, position
paper, SFT, Société française des traducteurs
Humans at the heart of technology
On 13 June, the Société française des
traducteurs (SFT), France’s union for professional translators and
interpreters, published a statement on artificial intelligence based on the
results of a survey of its members in November and December 2023. The SFT is
voicing the concerns of the professions it represents that humans should remain
at the heart of this technology and that, if they continue unchecked,
generative AI solutions used for translation and interpreting could lead to the
impoverishment of both language and of critical thinking, the very essence of
communication – and of our humanity. Read here/
Commission publishes first draft of General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence Code of Practice
The Commission has published the first draft of the General-Purpose Artificial Intelligence (AI) Code of Practice. Link here/
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Statement on AI training
“The unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted.” Link here/
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HarperCollins
HarperCollins to allow tech firms to use
its books to train AI models Some nonfiction backlist titles will be
used to train artificial intelligence with authors’ permission, link here/ Same in Danish: HarperCollins indgår aftale med AI-virksomhed om adgang til ældre
titler, link her/
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Spines and the rise of AI book publishers
New publishing venture has been roundly condemned by industry figures
Book industry figures have described the team behind a publishing AI startup as "dingbats", "opportunists" and "extractive capitalists". Link/
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The Danish Agency for Digital Government launches guidelines for public authorities and businesses on the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI). (Link in Danish) Link/
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Knut Hamsun’s Voice AI-Cloned
An audiobook featuring Knut Hamsun himself reading Hunger with the help of AI is sparking protests.
Knut Hamsun is being violated when publishers artificially recreate his voice to read Hunger.
Recently, on the author’s 165th birthday, an audiobook was released in which listeners can hear Knut Hamsun read his novel Hunger aloud—in Oxford English. That is to say, it’s not the authentic Hamsun, but a voice that has been artificially recreated using AI. (Link in Danish) Link/
AI Licensing for Authors: Who Owns the Rights and What’s a Fair Split?
AI Training Is Not Covered Under Standard Publishing Agreements.
A trade publishing agreement grants just that: a license to publish. AI training is not publishing, and a publishing contract does not in any way grant that right. AI training is not a new book format, it is not a new market, it is not a new distribution mechanism. Licensing for AI training is a right entirely unrelated to publishing, and is not a right that can simply be tacked onto a subsidiary-rights clause. It is a right reserved by authors, a right that must be negotiated individually for each publishing contract, and only if the author chooses to license that right at all. Link/
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Anne Schjoldager, Helle Dam Jensen, Tina Paulsen Christensen& Kristine Bundgaard: Professional Translator vs. Google Translate: the case of Lars Larsen’s Autobiography
Abstract: Wishing to contribute to a necessary discussion of how the task of translation should be conceptualised in our posthuman world, the paper investigates what characterises a professional translation completely unaided by translation technology and compares it with a translation generated by Google Translate(GT),a well-known and free neural machine translation (NMT), based on artificial intelligence (AI).The source text is Lars Larsen’s Danish-language autobiography from 2004, assessed as particularly challenging to translate because of many instances of contextually and culturally embedded meaning. Analyses are carried out in three steps: (1) a textual analysis of the source text; (2) a skopos-theoretical analysis of the professional translation; and (3) comparative analyses of the two translations. In terms of wording, two thirds of the translations are assessed as sufficiently similar to conclude that these parts of the GT translation achieve professional translation quality. The remaining parts are sufficiently different to conclude that professional quality is not achieved by GT. The professional translator complies with professional ethics and Vermeer’s hierarchy of rules and succeeds in solving all predefined translation problems, while this is not the case for GT. The reason may be that GT does not understand text in the real sense of the word, does no twork situationally and goal-oriented and does not base decisions on professional expertise and ethics. While we are looking into a future with increasingly advanced translation technology, we should not lose sight of what is expected of a professional translation. Link/
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Translators fear and embrace New Technology
For some translators, technology causes technostress. For others, it’s an indispensable assistant. Discover the five types of technostress.
The translation industry is once again undergoing a transformation. New technology—particularly generative AI—has rapidly changed the conditions for how translators work. For some, it’s already an indispensable tool, while others fear it threatens their livelihood.
“No one can predict the future, but generative AI will definitely become a tool that many will use,” says Tina Paulsen Christensen, associate professor at Aarhus University, where she researches AI-based technologies. (Link in Danish) Link/
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Written by: The Language Council of Norway
How good is ChatGPT in Norwegian, really? The Language Council has tested the robot’s language use in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. (Link in Norwegian) Link/
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Copyright and Artificial Intelligence - Part 2: Copyrightability
A report of the Register of Copyrights, January 2025 United States Copyright Office, link/
**************** Documento: Guía para definir una política editorial sobre la Inteligencia Artificial Documento: "Pautas para definir una política editorial de uso de la Inteligencia Artificial" El desarrollo de la Inteligencia Artificial es probablemente el desafío más importante que nos toque vivir como humanidad en este siglo, e implicará transformaciones en todos los órdenes de la vida. Podemos criticarla y tener una mirada escéptica sobre el futuro al que nos va a llevar, y hay argumentos y razones sobradas para ello. Pero su impacto (positivo y negativo) es inevitable, y debemos comprenderla y aprender a convivir con esta tecnología. Los seres humanos hemos evolucionado de la mano de las tecnologías que hemos inventado. Pero la IA es especial, porque nos obliga a cuestionarnos cuál es nuestra esencia y qué nos distingue de nuestro entorno.
Por Daniel Benchimol- Director de Proyecto451 Descarga del documento aquí/
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Curious Children Deserve Good Images
January 30, 2025 — by Lone Nikolajsen
“…‘An attempt that didn’t succeed.’” That’s how Kaya Hoff, director of the publisher Forlaget Carlsen, described to several media outlets her company’s decision regarding… previous publications are typically illustrated with photographs or drawings, especially when covering prehistoric animals.
This time, however, the illustrations were meant to depict animals in very specific situations. And as Sebastian Klein said on P1’s Orientering, “…the idea to use AI.” In Weekendavisen, he refers to the publication as “a misstep.”
Images Devoid of Fascination
As is often the case with missteps, the flaws in the images from the now-withdrawn first edition of Denmark’s 100 Craziest… are evident… (Link in Danish)… Link/
Paris 2025 AI Action Summit: International Charter on Culture and Innovation
The Paris AI Summit intends to promote reliable, sustainable and responsible AI. For the first time at this level, intellectual property is being discussed.
This is an essential global issue that cannot be ignored. That is why 38 international organisations representing all the creative and cultural sectors are today issuing a call to build a future that reconciles the development of AI with respect for copyright and related rights. Link/
RESPECT DU DROIT D'AUTEUR
Paris 2025 AI Action Summit : International charter on ‘Culture and Innovation’
Having regard to the Recommendation of the OECD Council on Artificial Intelligence, dated 3 May 2024, in particular its Principles for a Responsible Approach in Support of Trustworthy AI, including points 1.2 Respect for the Rule of Law, 1.3 Transparency and Explainability and 1.5 Accountability; ... Link/
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Harmful Effects of Machine Translation and Their Mitigation: A Preliminary Taxonomy Mikel L. Forcada Prompsit Language Engineering
While initially designed almost seventy years ago to enable the understanding of documents written in a foreign language—probably their main public use nowadays—machine translation is also routinely used to generate content to be published, ideally—but unfortunately not always—after careful editing by translation professionals. During the past few decades, the usefulness of machine translation systems has improved massively in these two usages, but their generalized deployment has brought about—and will bring about—many negative effects. This lecture, based on the chapter of the same title published in The Social Impact of Automating Translation, presents a preliminary taxonomy of the main harmful impacts of machine translation by adopting a structured analysis to identify harming agents, actions, harms, processes, and harmed parties—who did what to whom and how. It further discusses how these harms can be mitigated, and briefly comments on the legal protection available to harmed parties against these harming agents and the actual legal risk incurred by the harming agents. The aim of this analysis is to contribute to the debate of the issues that need to be addressed to foster a responsible and ethical deployment of machine translation.
Mikel L. Forcada (Caracas, 1963) retired as a full professor of Computer Languages and Systems at the Universitat d’Alacant in 2024. He is founding partner (2006) and chief research officer of Prompsit Language Engineering. Prof. Forcada initiated the Apertium and Bitextor free/open-source projects. His latest research spans translation technologies and machine learning, with over 70 publications.
Powerpoints from the webinar, link/ February 12th, 2025 Lecture in Catalan at 12.00 pm (Central European Time) Lecture in English at 1.00 pm (Central European Time) GMeet and “Germá Colon” Lecture Hall School of Humanities and Social Sciences Universitat Jaume I Spain Organizer: MA program in Researching Translation and Interpreting
When: Wednesday Feb 12, 2025 ⋅ 12:00 – 14:30 (Central European Time - Madrid)
General-Purpose AI Code of Practice: letter of concern
15 representative organisations of authors and performers sent a joint letter to EU Executive Vice-President Virkkunen and Commissionner Micallef about the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice. The letter expresses their concerns about the second draft of the Code of Practice and urges the EU to encourage the development of a responsible AI industry that respects our authors’ and performers’ intellectual property rights. Link/
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“Not fit for purpose”
European translators, journalists and writers express their strong opposition to the Third Draft of the EU’s Code of Practice for the AI Act’s implementation. Link/
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“Not fit for purpose”: authors strongly oppose draft of EU’s Code of Practice for AI Act implementation
“Not fit for purpose”
European translators, journalists and writers express their strong opposition to the Third Draft of the EU’s Code of Practice for the AI Act’s implementation.
CEATL (the European Council of Literay Translators’ Associations), EFJ (the European Federation of Journalists) and EWC (the European Writers’ Council), representing more than 550 000 authors from 159 asssociations, s their strong opposition to the third draft of the EU’s Code of Practice under the EU’s AI Act legislation in a joint letter (read it here) to Henna Virkkunen (Executive Vice-president of the European Commission for technological sovereignty, security and democracy) and the EU AI Board.
Not fit for purpose: Writers, translators and journalists of the European text sector express strong opposition to the Third Draft of the EU’s Code of Practice under the AI Act’s implementation.
Dear Executive Vice-President Virkkunen,
Dear Members of the EU AI Board:
We, the three federations CEATL, EFJ and EWC, represent over 550,000 individual authors from 159 associations in the text sectors, who work as writers, journalists and literary translators in all genres and media forms in the EU and beyond.
We are writing to express our strong opposition to the third draft of the EU's Code of Practice under the EU's AI Act legislation. The simplified and industry-friendly orientation of the Code of Practice, combined with a vocabulary that rarely calls for commitment, means that EU law will be undermined, and the minimum requirements of the AI Act will not be met. Link/.
Maris Kreizman: One of the Richest Companies in the World is Stealing From the Rest of Us
By Maris Kreizman
March 27, 2025
On Thursday, March 20, all of the writers I know were in a bit of a frenzy. That morning Alex Reisner at the Atlantic had published a piece about Llama 3, Meta’s AI model, and the astonishing number of pirated books on which it had been trained. Meta’s leadership, against the advice of their lawyers, had used LibGen, a pirate file-sharing site supposedly intended to make academic papers more accessible worldwide. Along with Reisner’s article came a handy search bar where you could type your name to see if Meta had used any of your writing to train its generative language models. Link/
Recommendations by the European Writers’ Council (EWC) for writers and translators, publishers, booksellers, event organisers and further stakeholders of the book sector for bilateral and contractual agreements and technical requirements. Link/
https://europeanwriterscouncil.eu/ai-tool-kit2024
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Generative AI, the writers and the translators
Please take special notice of the document on labeling of AI-produced texts that is linked to.
How does Generative Artificial Intelligence - GAI - affects the work we do, the way we work, the way we perceive ourselves, our languages, the copyright we have, the intellectual property rights we have, the money we make - in short, our professional lives and our daily lives.
Films Created with AI Should Not Carry a Label at the Oscars – That Could Be a Problem
As the technology behind AI continues to improve, it is becoming possible to create films that closely resemble authentic, human-made productions. This could be a tragedy for cinematic art.
Editores, escritores y traductores europeos se manifiestan sobre libros generados por IA, enlace/
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“ Un llamado a la transparencia con respecto a los libros generados por IA ”, enlace/
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El Social Science Research Council (SSRC), publicó recientemente el informe titulado “ Beyond Public Access in LLM Pre-Training Data: Non-public book content in OpenAI's Models ”, link/
Jack Dorsey dice que no debería existir la ley de propiedad intelectual, y Elon Musk está de acuerdo: "Eliminen todas las leyes de PI", enlace/
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Investigación: Cómo verificar que una IA fue entrenada con nuestros libros, por Tim O’Reilly, enlace/
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Rights Alliance - for the creative industries on the internet
REPORT ON PIRATED CONTENT USED IN THE TRAINING OF GENERATIVE AI
Uden transparens er ophavsretten tomme ord Der er brug for, at EU medvirker til at give rettighedshavere flere redskaber til at håndhæve deres rettigheder, når techvirksomheder bruger deres værker til at udvikle kunstig intelligens.
On 13 May, EU national ministers responsible for culture policies will convene in Brussels for the Education, Youth, Culture and Sport Council. Ahead of this meeting, Spain and Portugal have called for a discussion on the value of the cultural and creative sectors in AI development, focusing on the importance of safeguarding copyright and related rights, as well as ensuring transparency in the General-Purpose AI Code of Practice under the AI Act.
GPAI Code of Practice, GPAI Guidelines, Template under Article 53 of the EU AI Act
Jul 31, 2025 - CEATL
40 Federations of the European cultural and creative sector express all their dissatisfaction with the published GPAl Code of Practice, the GPAl Guidelines, and the Template under Article 53 of the EU Al Act. Link/
Authors Guild Applauds Introduction of Block BEARD Act to Combat Foreign Book Piracy and Protect U.S. Authors
Artificial Intelligence
August 1, 2025
The Authors Guild welcomes the introduction of a discussion draft of the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors (Block BEARD) Act of 2025, a vital bipartisan effort led by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC), Chris Coons (D-DE), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), and Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA). This legislation would give copyright holders, including authors and publishers, powerful new tools to combat foreign-based digital piracy sites that steal and distribute books and other creative works without authorization. Link/
The 28-page plan focuses on three pillars: accelerating innovation, infrastructure, and strengthening diplomacy while removing red tape.
Outlined actions include building new data centers, repealing legal barriers to AI growth, encouraging open-source AI, and incentivizing the tech’s adoption.
The plan also includes rooting out "ideological bias" in AI systems through new rules requiring government contractors to ensure their models are "objective."
The document called the AI boom an “industrial revolution, an information revolution, and a renaissance—all at once.”
Why it matters: The AI policy shift under the new administration is real, with the Trump administration’s Action Plan pushing an all-in growth strategy that aims to use deregulation and massive infrastructure investments to secure the lead over China — even if it means stripping safeguards in the process.
"Frontier language models" are mentioned on page 11
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - European Writers' Council
Topics related to authors’ rights & new technologies, link/
Recommendations by the European Writers’ Council (EWC) for writers and translators, publishers, booksellers, event organisers and further stakeholders of the book sector for bilateral and contractual agreements and technical requirements. Link/
The European Parliament Translation Service has updated the 'Multilingual dictionary of new words', a fascinating collection of 500+ new entries gathered by translators from the EU’s 24 official languages.
From pandemic-era neologisms to digital culture slang and climate-related terms, this dictionary captures nicely how language evolves.
A brilliant resource for linguists, translators, communicators and anyone curious about the living, shifting nature of language. A cultural snapshot of Europe today! Find it on op.europa.eu of the Publications Office of the European Union:
Global Roadmap for Multilingualism in the Digital Era: Advancing the Role of Language Technologies (draft)
The full report in draft is there in English, Spanish and French and may be downloaded. Link/
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From Microsoft Bing – Bing Image Creator
Free, AI-powered Bing Image Creator and Bing Video Creator turn your words into stunning visuals and engaging videos in seconds. Generate images and videos quickly and easily, powered by DALL-E and Sora. Link/
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