AI could never replace my authors. But, without regulation, it will ruin publishing as we know it

Basic principles need to be enshrined to protect the sacred craft of storytelling from this automated onslaught

The single biggest threat to the livelihood of authors and, by extension, to our culture, is not short attention spans. It is AI.

The UK publishing industry – worth more than £11bn, part of the £126bn that our creative industries generate for the British economy – has sat by while big tech has “swept” copyrighted material from the internet in order to train their models. Recently, the AI startup Anthropic settled a $1.5bn copyright case over this issue, but the ship has undeniably left the harbour and big tech is sailing off with the goods.

As a literary agent and CEO of one of the largest agencies in Europe, I think this is something everyone should care about – not because we fear progress, but because we want to protect it. If you take away the one thing that makes us truly human – our ability to think like humans, create stories and imagine new worlds – we will live in a diminished world.

Many great writers have written about why stories are the lifeblood of humanity and how an artist’s job is to tell us truths we may not want to hear. Having worked with writers such as John le Carré, Elif Shafak, William Boyd and David Nicholls, I know first-hand where great storytelling comes from.

Le Carré was born in 1931 and survived a childhood with a conman father and a mother who abandoned him when he was five years old. He came of age as the cold war began. Treachery and betrayal was his childhood and proved – to paraphrase Graham Greene – to be the bank balance of his writing life. During his time with the secret services, it was through writing reports – and getting feedback from senior officers – that he learned to write. His skill was derived from the personal, his upbringing and his craft.

To read the full article on theguardian.com, click here