As I write this, I feel a sense of accomplishment. Thanks to advances in generative AI, I have found a new voice as a writer and overcome the severe challenges posed by my cognitive impairments in organizing words on a page. But because there is still uncertainty about whether AI-generated works can be copyrighted, I have had to take steps to protect my intellectual property that most authors don’t. My story should inspire those interested in the intersection of AI and copyright law to think about what principles they would like to see supported in the law.
I’m 60 years old and a retired U.S. military officer. I joined the Army as a tank mechanic during the recession of 1982, and my superiors quickly realized I was an excellent writer. I became known for producing top-notch evaluation reports, awards, memos, and the like. But my writing skills declined as the mental illness that plagued me began to manifest.
I never knew why I was suffering such severe decline until I was properly diagnosed. After retiring, I was awarded 100% disability by the VA and the Social Security Administration. I suffer from C-PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Chiara Type 1 Brainstem Malformation, and Gender Dysphoria. Each of these diagnoses has a profound effect on my cognitive and creative abilities. Simple, mundane activities that others perform effortlessly are mountain climbs for me.
It’s always been my dream to be a published author. Due to a debilitating mental illness, I had resigned myself to the fact that it would never happen in my lifetime. But AI technology changed that. A big tech company that people have a bad reputation for giving me a lifeline.
For me, creating on the shoulders of others doesn’t mean copying someone else’s work or simply typing in a text prompt and using what ChatGPT spits out. My first book was painstakingly created sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph. I describe it as using ChatGPT as a reverse camera.
To create, I tell a tool like ChatGPT the written scene I have in my head, and ChatGPT decodes my creative vision into usable material that can compete in the marketplace and meet Amazon’s publishing requirements. Each sentence and paragraph built based on my input is a mental concept born from my mind’s eye that is translated and then further refined. Other AI tools like Grammarly and ProWritingAid make this possible too.
As a result, for the first time, people are able to create long-form content without mental health issues halting their creative process.
I hope my novel will be well received because I want to inspire others to write and create, especially those who suffer from disabilities. If AI can unlock my creativity and overcome my disabilities, I am sure it can do the same for others.
Unfortunately, individuals who rely on AI assistants are often treated as inferior and subjected to pejorative language from status quo groups and organizations that fear the technology and see it as a threat to their way of life.
This negative thinking erases the work of people like me who use AI assistants to accomplish things that would otherwise be impossible. Worse, it is the thinking behind the misguided enthusiasm to enact inept copyright policies that would once again create barriers to entry for people like me to write.
Some people want to force AI developers to obtain explicit licenses before using copyrighted works when training their AI tools. Not only would this dramatically jeopardize the capabilities of one of the large language models I use, but it wouldn’t do much to help artists get paid. These tools train on billions of works, so individual authors would likely only receive a few cents or dollars. It’s unclear whether any money will flow to authors.
The Copyright Office (USCO) has denied many copyright registrations for AI-generated works. I’m proud that I fought back, which allowed me to obtain copyright for my book, an adaptation of AI-generated text, which is a human work. But I think the USCO should have gone further. They shouldn’t have forced me to exclude AI-generated text, which would have weakened copyright protection. I strongly believe that assistance under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) should be extended to writers with severe disabilities. I hope others will build on this argument.
I hope that in the future, discussions about AI will be more inclusive of disabled creators like me. I understand that others have significant concerns about these tools, which I expressed in an open letter to other artists who use AI for their creative work. Too often, large corporations and other powerful organizations use technology in ways that exploit artists’ labor and undermine our ability to earn a living. Therefore, if we want to ensure that the revolutionary trajectory of generative AI benefits all of humanity, it would be a major oversight to exclude those in society who are operating within its possibilities and limitations.
Authors should include individuals like me who have overcome countless obstacles to get to this point.
