The Korean Publishers Society is calling for fair compensation for creators after Anthropic reportedly bought large volumes of books by Korean authors and downloaded illegal digital copies to train its artificial intelligence models.
The group said on the 16th that it has drafted a document it calls a "national appeal" and is collecting signatures, aiming to protect the rights of creators and publishers and to build a foundation for coexistence between AI and the publishing industry. In the appeal, titled "No Books, No AI," the group said generative AI is advancing through books while "the very people who made those books do not even know when, how or which AI used their work." It added, "Because they cannot know, they cannot ask, refuse or demand fair compensation." The group also said disclosure is where accountability begins. "AI companies must record the works they used for training, their sources and the legal basis for that use, and allow rights holders to verify it," the appeal said.
The group also made clear that AI training should require permission from rights holders. "The absence of an explicit objection from a rights holder must not be treated as consent to use," the appeal said, adding that "the government and the National Assembly must not restrict creators' rights in the name of fostering industry." It further urged that "AI companies must pay fair compensation to the rights holders of published works," and that "small and mid-sized publishers and individual creators with weak bargaining power must also be able to negotiate and be compensated on fair terms."
The group plans to deliver the appeal to the government, the National Assembly and AI companies. As of 2 p.m. on the same day, 158 organizations including publishers and related institutions, along with 321 individuals such as writers, translators and publishing professionals, had signed. Signatories include novelists Kim Nam-il, Kim Yi-jeong, Eun Mi-hee and Cho Young-ju; poets Na Hee-duk, Ryu Keun and Chung Woo-young; and translator Hong Han-byeol.
The appeal aligns with the "Frankfurt Declaration" released on the 6th by the German Publishers and Booksellers Association and about 120 publishers to coincide with the opening of the Frankfurt Book Fair. That document called on the European Union and the German government to require disclosure of copyrighted works used in AI training, to establish a fair licensing framework and to secure effective means of protecting copyright.
Behind the wave of such appeals from publishing industries in Korea and other major countries is the bulk buying of books by AI developers for training purposes. Anthropic was found to have signed a contract with Woongjin Booksen, a domestic book distributor, and purchased hundreds of thousands of Korean-language books. Anthropic is also reported to have illegally downloaded works by Korean authors including Han Kang, Hwang Sok-yong and Shin Kyung-sook. Korean bookstores such as Kyobo Book Centre and Yes24 have recently received a series of inquiries about large-scale purchases of new and used books suspected to be for AI training. In Japan, book distributor Nippon Shuppan Hanbai drew controversy after selling large volumes of Japanese-language books to Anthropic.