Latest news with #SocietyofAuthors
Scotsman
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
The 6 Scottish authors shortlisted for major literary prizes
Sign up to our Arts and Culture newsletter, get the latest news and reviews from our specialist arts writers Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Six Scottish writers have been shortlisted in a major literary awards ceremony. The writers are up for a range of prizes at the Society of Authors (SoA) awards, including one accolade awarded to a disabled or chronically ill author writing about a character facing similar issues. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Tom Newlands is the only author to be shortlisted for two prizes – the ADCI Literary Prize and the McKitterick Prize for a first novel by an author over 40 – for his work Only Here, Only Now. The publication explores what it means to come of age in a 'forgotten corner of Scotland'. Ali Smith is also among the shortlisted Scots, with Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize shortlisted novel Gliff, which fits the award criteria for focusing on the experience of travel away from home. She is up against writers including One Day author David Nicholls for You Are Here and Matt Haig for The Life Impossible, published by Edinburgh-based Canongate Books. Hamish Grey is shortlisted for the ALCS Tom Gallon Trust Award for his short story, But the fire will spit again, and Genevieve Jagger and Madeline Docherty, are each shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize for first time writers under 35, for their novels Fragile Animals and Gender Theory respectively. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Meanwhile, Sara Ogilvie is shortlisted for a Queen's Knickers Award, as the illustrator of Big Bad Wolf Investigates Fairy Tales, written by Catherine Cawthorne. Chair of the SoA board, Vanessa Fox O'Loughlin, said: 'The SoA Awards truly demonstrate the breadth and height of voices both nationally and internationally. We are delighted to be able to showcase the richness of talent across so many genre areas and are thrilled each year with the reach of submissions. As authors we understand what these books represent and the SoA Awards are a rare opportunity to celebrate and reward the work of a huge range of talent." Judge Jini Reddy said Ms Smith's novel 'movingly articulates the courage that resistance demands of us': Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad She said: 'The books on this year's Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize shortlist transport the reader to worlds perilous, political, speculative and amorous.' Author Ali Smith. | Getty The ADCI Literary Prize is awarded to a disabled or chronically ill writer, for an outstanding novel containing a disabled or chronically ill character or characters. Penny Batchelor, judge of the prize, said: 'This year's shortlisted books all have powerful plots that pack a punch, immersing the reader in finely-crafted worlds and situations that can shock, cause the shedding of tears, an out-loud belly laugh, or silent recognition of solidarity with their multifaceted characters. READ MORE: Creative Scotland review to be expanded by Scottish Government Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad 'Covering historical, literary and contemporary fiction, there's something on the shortlist for any reader who wants to eschew outmoded disability stereotypes and engage with powerful stories showing the realities of living a disabled life.'
Tatler Asia
09-05-2025
- Business
- Tatler Asia
The AI book scraping issue explained
The revelations have sparked widespread outrage among authors and copyright advocates. The Society of Authors called Meta's actions 'appalling', with chief executive Ana Ganley saying: 'Rather than ask permission and pay for these copyright-protected materials, AI companies are knowingly choosing to steal them in the race to dominate the market. This is shocking behaviour by big tech that is currently being enabled by governments who are not intervening to strengthen and uphold current copyright protections. As part of the Creative Rights in AI Coalition, the SoA has been at the heart of the fight and is continuing to lobby against these unlawful and exploitative activities.' Meta's statement In response, Meta filed a motion to dismiss the case, stating: 'At the crux of this case is an issue of extraordinary importance to the future of generative AI development in the United States: whether Meta's use of publicly available datasets to train its open-source large language models constitutes fair use under U.S. copyright law.' The company maintains that training AI with data freely available online falls under fair use—an argument that may have far-reaching consequences for the future of AI development. What happens next? As Kadrey vs. Meta unfolds in the United States, other copyright infringement lawsuits have also been filed against Meta. Meanwhile, some authors are exploring ways to remove their work from pirate libraries like LibGen and Z-Library. With mounting legal pressure and global scrutiny, the outcome of this case could set a precedent for how AI companies source their training data—and whether creators will finally get a say in how their work is used.
Irish Examiner
06-05-2025
- Irish Examiner
Maybe Big Tech isn't the problem — maybe it's humanity
First thing this morning, a WhatsApp from Meta invited me to ask their AI to 'imagine" me in a pink ski suit, or 'imagine' a professional portrait of me, and it will create the image. Minutes later, I opened my emails to Audible offering "virtual voice" AI-narrated audiobooks — allowing me to create an audiobook from my e-books using computer-generated voices. All this occurred before I'd had my morning coffee, and just a few weeks after Meta's alleged use of pirated books from thousands of authors sparked a protest by the Society of Authors outside Meta's headquarters in London. I have a pink ski jacket and don't need to imagine what I look like in pink ski gear. I have a professional headshot — one that looks like me — so I don't need one that makes me look younger, thinner, and only serves to make people snigger when I appear before them in real life. The virtual voice audiobook is tempting, but since I work closely with a community theatre group, I'd never ask an AI to read my books when I could gainfully employ an actor. I can't afford to pay an actor, so the audiobooks go un-made and the actor is unpaid either way. I'm fascinated by the leaps technology has made during my lifetime, especially in communications. I remember our first telephone, a landline back in the late 1970s, attached to the wall with a wire. The only 'wireless' in those days was a battery-operated radio that sat on the kitchen windowsill so mum could hear it in the garden The phone was for dad's small business and no use to us kids since nobody else we knew had a phone. Dad's younger brother worked in Saudi Arabia as an engineer. When he came home after a year — no nipping home for long weekends in those days — he'd tell us about the marvellous inventions he'd seen. 'There's this machine,' he said with awe, 'that answers your telephone, even when you aren't home, and records the caller's message.' We were aware of a tape recorder. Who of a certain age doesn't remember sitting poised to press the red record button along with the play button at the right moment during Top of The Pops? Disaster could strike at any time and ruin the tape mix if someone in the room spoke. But a tape recorder that worked by itself? What voodoo was this? Another time, my uncle came home with news of a machine that recorded your TV shows when you weren't home. When we got our own video recorder, we'd turn on the telly, set the channel, and leave the whole thing on before leaving. It was a while before we realised not only did we not need to have the TV switched on, but that we could even watch something else on a different channel — get this — at the same time We weren't a high-tech family, though we did have an old record player whose speakers could be stored on top so that it looked like a suitcase, complete with a handle to pick the whole lot up. Dad made great technological strides in the development of a remote control when he bought a TV with touch-sensitive buttons. Armed with an extendable car radio aerial (something you never see any more), he could dispense with asking us to switch the channel and wobbled a fully extended aerial to touch the buttons. There were six buttons but only three channels — four if you counted RTÉ, which only worked in good weather. Virtual clothing In stark contrast was Dad's older brother who had emigrated to America and worked in Pan Am as a computer programmer. This uncle often talked about programming on cards, arranged in and carried about in boxes. He was at the forefront of programming the machines that airports used for tickets, and later boarding passes, until our home computers took over both jobs. Similar machines now churn out the labels we stick on our suitcases. Perhaps in the future, we'll all be wearing virtual clothes as 'imagined' by Meta AI, making suitcases and these machines obsolete. Dad joined the digital age in the mid-80s and bought a Commodore 64. More high tech than cards in boxes, this miracle of technology uploaded programmes from a tape cassette. Venturing where nobody in our household had gone before, I played The Quest — a text adventure game that came with the machine — only to be stymied by a dwarf who could not be bribed with magical swords, keys, or lamps. Perhaps if I'd outwitted the dwarf and gained access to the rest of the labyrinth, I'd be addicted to gaming or become the next tech wizard. Instead, I resorted to learning some basic and wrote a short programme that displayed my name in green letters repeatedly on a black screen. That Commodore 64 triggered my curiosity about computers As someone with terrible handwriting, I embraced word processing despite the laments that we'd all forget how to write. After completing a degree in environmental biology in 1990, I did a master's degree in computer science and learned to programme properly — laying the foundations for my life as a researcher, a teacher, a traveller, a writer, and a human being in a digital age. As the dial-up era migrated to broadband internet, we navigated the non-event that was the millennium bug and faced the crisis of putting our beloved postal workers out of work by switching to email. Humanity entered the digital age whether they wanted to or not, and, more alarmingly, even if they weren't able to cope with it In a world where global news is served up — true or false — where people commune on social media, and where we chat with loved ones on the other side of the globe in real-time using video conferencing (no more long-distance delays as voices travel on undersea cables) many resent technology. Tech is the scapegoat for the ills of society. We blame photoshopping and social sites for an increase in body dysmorphia, but I remember fad diets in the pre-internet 1980s. And what about those impossibly thin models in the 'Twiggy' era of the 1960s? Or Victorian times, when corseted women fainted because they hadn't room to breathe? Did they see that on Instagram? There is nothing new about bullying, cyber or otherwise. Technology simply makes that easier, like it makes most things easier, from grandparents long-distance video-conferencing their family to brain implants so the paralysed can walk. Meta isn't the first to allegedly "steal' artists's work. What would you call what we did with our tape recorders during Top of the Pops? Perhaps there is truth in the aphorism written in 1849 by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr: 'The more things change, the more they remain the same" — a sentiment echoed almost verbatim by Bon Jovi's 2010 song, The More Things Change. Are we too willing to hold technology responsible? Is cruelty and laziness hardwired into the human psyche? In the midst of our blame culture, perhaps we need to take a good hard look at ourselves. Maybe technology is not actually the problem — maybe humanity is. Byddi Lee is an author living in Armagh. Read More Most financial compliance professionals still unaware of EU rules governing AI, warns study
The Courier
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Fife crime author Marion Todd fears for career after AI 'theft'
A best-selling Fife crime author fears losing her career 'at a stroke' following the 'theft' of work by a global tech giant. All nine of Marion Todd's novels were included in a dataset used to train Meta's new AI model, Llama 3. The former lecturer and piano tutor's books centre on fictional detective Clare Mackay, who is based at St Andrews police station. They are among more than seven million copyrighted works downloaded without permission. And Marion has added her voice to those of around 150 other authors calling for their removal. They fear AI models, trained on their books, could soon begin producing work replicating their style. Marion said: 'If it becomes very skilled, it could finish my career at a stroke.' The Wormit author's concerns echo those of Angus crime author Ed James. and other best-selling writers. Well-known musicians, including Annie Lennox, Kate Bush and Blur frontman Damon Albarn, are also protesting the use of their work. Originally from Dundee, Marion Todd has just completed her 10th book, which is now with her publisher. It takes her between six and nine months to produce each book in her series. However, she is concerned Meta will eventually be able to do it at the touch of a button. She said: 'My concern is it would then be possible for Meta to say 'give me 100 Marion Todd books'. 'They wouldn't be very good to start with, but the more they're fed and the more they do it, the better they'll get.' All of the affected works were taken from the 'Lib Gen dataset', one of the largest collections of pirated books in the world. Marion says book piracy has been around for a long time and is impossible to stop. 'It's whack-a-mole, to be honest,' she said. 'You ask one to take it down and another one pops up. 'But crime author fans are voracious and the idea that my books could be replicated hundreds of times over is not good.' The Society of Authors held a protest outside Meta's UK headquarters in London last month. It has now written to Meta demanding compensation for affected writers. 'I'm fully behind the action being taken by the Society of Authors,' said Marion. 'I would also like to see some protection coming out from the Government in the form of licensing model.' Last year, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the use of open source AI, such as Llama 3, is progress and will be good for the world. He added: 'Since the models are open, anyone is capable of testing for themselves as well. 'We must keep in mind that these models are trained by information that's already on the internet, so the starting point when considering harm should be whether a model can facilitate more harm than information that can quickly be retrieved from Google or other search results.' However, Marion said: 'For creativity, it's not progress.'
The Guardian
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
AI doesn't care about authors, but Meta should
Andrew Vincent makes a good point in that, very often, artists are already expected to behave like artificial intelligence (Letters, 6 April). But of course creativity is not simply a matter of training on the work of others. Innovative artists make decisions towards low-probability outcomes; imitation, meanwhile, seeks high-probability outcomes. As things stand, generative AI models are imitation engines – and they do not celebrate their sources, they conceal them. Writers carry forward ideas and techniques, yes, but an immeasurable part of human creativity comes from the certain knowledge that we will one day die. AI does not have that gift. For all it consumes, it does not choose what to remember or believe or feel. Authors are as much up in arms about the extreme-capitalist assumption that we're simply machines, regurgitating content, as we are about the systemic theft of our work. Human authors also tend to worry about the difference between inspiration and plagiarism. AI has not yet been programmed to care, and no one's holding their breath on that X AtackBristol Andrew Vincent says creativity has always 'trained' on the work of others. He is right. Reading widely helps my writing, and art influences art. But I'm not objecting to Meta using my work for AI training; I'm objecting to Meta having done so without permission or payment, for commercial gain and outside the scope of fair use. I buy the books I need to read, or borrow them from a proper library, so that the authors get their fair library payment and their intellectual property is respected. Meta has stolen far more books than any single author could read – around 7 million. Please let's consider properly the long-term consequences of allowing big, wealthy tech to flout legal protections and steal intellectual property from LongstaffChair of the Children's Writers and Illustrators Group, Society of Authors Do you have a photograph you'd like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers' best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
