George R.R. Martin speaks on his AI lawsuit: "We need rules for all of this" (Exclusive)

It's no secret that generative AI is creating waves across multiple creative industries right now. From actors to artists to writers to musicians to video game developers, it seems most industries which deal in the creative arts are facing reckonings with this emerging technology — and even more so with the companies who deal in it.

Last month, I had the honor of interviewing none other than A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin during his visit to Glasgow, Scotland for the 82nd annual World Science Fiction Convention. Martin and I discussed a wide range of topics, but since we met at a convention with a focus on writing and books, it felt appropriate to discuss some of the challenges facing up-and-coming writers. And few challenges loom larger than AI, which is affecting the writing industry in ways ranging from journalists being laid off and replaced by chatbots, to publishers adding AI training clauses to book contracts, to renowned fantasy and science fiction magazine Clarkesworld being flooded with AI-generated story submissions.

AI isn't just a nebulous threat for Martin. He's one of 17 high-profile authors who are suing ChatGPT creator OpenAI as part of a class-action lawsuit being filed by The Author's Guild. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the suit alleges that the company is engaging in "a systematic course of mass-scale copyright infringement” to “power their lucrative commercial endeavor.” It's a testament to how much this issue is front of mind that it came up naturally during our conversation more than once, so I couldn't resist asking Martin about his stance on the matter, especially as it relates to book publishing.

"Well, the Author's Guild is suing [OpenAI], and I'm one of the plaintiffs to that lawsuit," he said. "Now, speaking to the guild's lawyers and to the other plaintiffs in the suit, we don't think we're gonna outlaw AI. You can't outlaw new technology. You can try, people have tried through history...but it's here to stay. The question is: what kind of regulations are you gonna have? What rules are there going to be? I mean, if you do use a book to train AI, does the author get to consent to the use of the book? Does the author have any say about it? Does the author get any income from it?"

The question of income is a big one, both for the creatives trying to grapple with this new technology as well as the companies selling it. Earlier this year, OpenAI stated in a filing to British Parliament that "it would be impossible to train today's leading AI models without using copyrighted materials." So in essence, companies that build AI generators like predictive text Large Language Models (LLMs) need these copyrighted works for their tech to function, but have so far managed to avoid paying out for their commercial use of them.

"Obviously on AI they're not just training one writer or not using one book, they're using like 10,000 books," Martin explained. "So they're using 10,000 books to train their AI, does each of the 10,000 authors get a nickel, or a dollar, or $100? If it's like $100, I don't know, maybe that becomes the new backlist; writers write books and then their books enter the big AI thing, or they give permission. I don't know. I don't know what rules they'll have but they have to have some kind of rules. If they have no rules, and things like the AI companies are just free to help themselves to anything they want, then I think we got a real problem because, you know, unlike AI authors need to eat and occasionally buy a house to live in and so forth."

The most "immediate crisis" for regulating AI lies with actors and artists

AI technologies aren't just a threat to writers, but to many other creative professionals as well. So while Martin and I started by talking about how the technology affects writers specifically, the conversation soon broadened. "In some ways, as challenging as it is for authors, I think the most immediate crisis will be for actors and artists. I mean, the artists are already getting it with AI [book] covers," he said.

"For actors, first of all there's the lower level actors, the extras. We have a friend who, last time we were in Atlanta, we went to a company and they scanned them. They had one of these new 360 degree camera things, and he stood in the middle of it and turned this way and that way, and they scanned him from every angle, from up above, down and around. And I think they had him sign that you get $200 as an extra...so, $200 and now they own those images for all time. And he can be used as an extra in 10,000 movies, they can put him in a Roman toga, they can put him in a Nazi uniform, they can add a rubber nose to him and a bunch of floppy shoes and say he's a clown in a circus movie, over and over and over again...and they paid him $200, that's all they'll get."

- George R.R. Martin

This exploitative scanning practice first came into the broader public awareness during last year's SAG-AFTRA strike, when the Hollywood actors guild made it known that studios pushing to scan actors' likenesses for use in perpetuity is something many guild members face. In 2023, it was estimated that roughly 32,000 out of SAG-AFTRA's 160,000 members had worked as background actors in the preceding year, a substantial part of the guild's membership.

"Extras face that, and even big-name actors," Martin said. "I mean, how long can Harrison Ford go on playing Indiana Jones? Well, I think the flop of the last movie may be an indication there. But what if you could cast Harrison, but you don't photograph Harrison, you use young Harrison in AI? And what if my next movie, I would like it to feature Marilyn Monroe and Errol Flynn? There you go."

As it turns out, Hollywood's a step ahead. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny did feature a young Harrison Ford for the first act of the film, but it utilized a different sort of de-aging technology. Ford still played the scenes himself, and a digital "mask" was later added over his face to make him appear younger. But protections for actors to prevent companies from recreating their likenesses wholesale was a key part of SAG-AFTRA's demands during the strike, and will likely continue to be a pressing issue until some sort of equilibrium can be reached.

"We need rules for all of this and we hope that our lawsuit is going forward...it's specifically targeted for the authors, and that question you raised about feeding the stuff in," Martin said. "But there are other lawsuits that are being filed by other people that could cover the actors and the illustrators and things like that. So it's a bold new world...but who will come out of it, and what will the rules be? I don't know."

Progress and persistence in the age of AI

That bold new world is still very much developing. On August 15, a class-action lawsuit filed by a group of artists won an important victory when a California judge ruled they had sufficiently argued that Stable Diffusion, the AI image generator behind Midjourney, Stability A.I., DeviantArt, and Runway A.I., may have been built “to a significant extent on copyrighted works," and was “created to facilitate that infringement by design.” The artists' lawsuit for copyright infringement will now move forward, and could prove to be a landmark case in the ongoing conversation surrounding Artificial Intelligence.

While Martin is deeply invested in the case against AI as it relates to writing, this isn't the first shift he's seen in the publishing industry. The Song of Ice and Fire author's career spans more than 50 years, all the way back to the early 1970s. Does he have any words of wisdom for young writers who are concerned about the effect AI could have on the field?

"You gotta keep apprised of this stuff," he said. "So maybe they should start going to Worldcons and other things, and know what's happening in the business. And you know, the real thing is to persist. I've been very lucky in some ways, but even with my luck, my career has crashed and burned twice. Once around 1984 with Armageddon Rag, and then I did the whole television thing for a decade, but then it crashed and burned again in like 1994 when my television show was canceled and I couldn't get another job. Fortunately, I had this idea for this Game of Thrones thing that worked out."

Winter Is Coming's full interview with George R.R. Martin is coming soon! We've got one more preview to share before it's here, so make sure to check back over the next few days.

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