AI Policy

A little history: Eighteen of my books (that’s half my entire catalog) were used without my permission to train Anthropic’s AI. In Bartz v. Anthropic, the class action copyright infringement lawsuit brought against them, Anthropic was ordered to pay an historic settlement of $1.5 billion to the authors they stole intellectual property from.

They offered me $3,000.00 per book as a settlement for stealing my work, a total of $54,000.00. For a number of legal and ethical reasons, I declined to accept the payout.

AI has some beneficial uses, such as in medical and scientific research, but it does not have any place in the arts. Every AI system is built on the theft of copyrighted text, images, and works without the consent of the original creators, and directly undermines human creativity. 

Therefore, I do not use AI or LLMs to brainstorm, write, edit, or market my stories. I don’t use AI or LLMs for narrating audiobooks or creating covers or artwork, and the creatives I hire for those tasks must clarify in their contracts what their AI policies are.

To the extent AI tools are used in my process, it is limited to things I can’t opt out of, such as AI embedded in internet search engines or spell check in programs like Word, which I use to draft. (Copilot in Word is disabled, as is the option to send information to Microsoft to train their products.)

Due to the recent number of AI scandals in publishing and the alarming proliferation of AI use accusations against authors—whether deserved or not—I have also implemented a comprehensive process that proves provenance for my manuscripts and that can be audited by my publishers on request.

I have been published since 2012, more than a decade before AI became available. My work will continue to adhere to the values of originality and authenticity I’ve held since the beginning of my career, and my commitment to my readers remains the same: writing unique stories to explore and celebrate our shared humanity. No artificial additives included.