Industry Panel: The AI Debate - Ginee Seo

 

Ginee Seo is VP and Editorial Director of Ten Speed Young Readers, the children's book imprint at Ten Speed/Crown. She has worked in children's book publishing for over 35 years and has held a number of positions, including Executive Publishing Director of Children’s Books at Chronicle Books; VP, Associate Publisher at Atheneum Books for Young Readers, where she also had her own eponymous imprint; and VP, Editorial Director at Harper Trophy. 

A note on this conversation, as AI is quite broad. In this conversation, the panelist are speaking to generative AI technology. Keeping in mind that generative AI has been built on copyrighted material (without compensation for that work). 

Martha asks about AI clauses in contracts.

Ginee shares that PRH doesn’t have a specific AI clause as of now, but they do already have a a clause that expresses that the work is solely created by the author. That said, they (PRH) very much believe in protecting copyright. On the copyright page of each book, there is a statement that any use of generative AI using the book is not allowed (protecting the person/people behind the book). 

She also shares that at Ten Speed, they have core principles:

• Human authorship is essential

• Originality and IP integrity is nonnegotiable

• Transparency and early communication are key

She says it all comes down to protecting you. 

Ginee wanted to be on this panel to share this message: Protect your text. Do not run your text through AI. If you do, you are giving away your material. People are not aware how invasive and intrusive AI is. 

Ginee is not seeing any request from agents or authors to not put their work through AI, but she thinks that’s likely to change

She is asked if any publishers are taking their IP work and putting it into AI to generate more work like it. Ginee hopes not, but she could see a possibility of that happening. 

On the question of using AI to research, Ginee says to consider the information are you giving it. Know it can be wrong. That it is only just a starting place.

Final advice: Ginee fears that maybe the conversation has created a bit of fear. She just wants you all, as book creators, to know: Do not make it easy for these companies to take your IP. Don't take the shortcuts. And, if you were to write something to share with publishing gatekeepers you might say, "All work done by an imperfect human." Imperfection is what makes us beautiful. It's what makes art. 

What an informative conversation about this important topic. If you want to listen, you can still register for the conference at scbwi.org and watch the replay.