Artificial intelligence company Anthropic has come under fire after it emerged that the firm bought large volumes of Korean books for AI training and downloaded pirated copies of works by Korean writers including Han Kang and Kim Ae-ran. In response, the Korean Publishers Society, which counts about 500 trade book publishers as members, issued an "appeal to the government, the National Assembly and AI companies," part of a growing push within the publishing industry for transparency in AI training data, a principle of prior permission from copyright holders and a system of fair compensation.
Hong Young-wan, chairman of the Korean Publishers Society and head of the publisher Willbook, met with The Seoul Economic Daily recently at the society's headquarters in Seoul's Mapo district. "It is a serious problem, legally as well as morally, that AI companies do not disclose which books they used to train their AI models, or which books their AI output is drawn from," Hong said.
"This not only renders the efforts of countless authors meaningless but also damages the pride of creators and amounts to stealing the knowledge that humanity has accumulated," Hong said. "That Anthropic shredded the books it bought in bulk after using them for AI training is as devastating as the burning of books and burying of scholars, in that it destroyed human knowledge and records."
Hong stressed in particular that "if published works were used for AI training and use, fair compensation for that should go to the authors." On that front, the Korean Publishers Society and the Korean Publishers Association, the country's two main publishing bodies, are working to create a joint copyright trust body for the industry that would negotiate licensing and compensation with AI companies on behalf of authors and publishers. "The goal is to set up a platform that brokers access to published works at a reasonable cost under set principles, as happens with music copyright," Hong said. "We expect concrete results to become visible around next year."
Hong also voiced concern about so-called "one-click publishing," the practice of churning out books easily with AI. "The focus should be on using AI to make better books, not on speeding up publication," he said. "If books full of errors and devoid of any emotional impact pour out after proofreading, editing and design are wrapped up in a day or two with AI, bad money could drive out good."
Signs of the problem are already surfacing in the judging of literary and publishing awards, he said. "Judges on literary award panels have been saying recently that the number of submissions has risen, but so has the number of works that look plagiarized or appear to have been written by AI, with loose plots and repetitive patterns," Hong said.
He expressed hope for the Youth Culture and Arts Pass, which will be expanded next year. The program, which subsidizes admission costs for cultural and arts events for young people, began covering books in August this year, and next year the eligible age range will widen to 19 to 34 from the current 19 to 20. "The publishing industry expects the expansion of the pass next year to boost sales by about 200 billion won," Hong said. "Given the size of the trade book market, that is a significant effect that could lift revenue by 5% to 10%."
Hong also pointed to the need to support local bookstores, which sustain diversity in the publishing ecosystem. "The problem of local bookstores being supplied books at higher prices than large online bookstores cannot be solved by the efforts of small publishers and bookstores alone," he said. "The government needs to consider using funds to help local bookstores obtain books cheaply so they can offer discounts on par with online bookstores."