Writers Protest Against AI, but Already Benefit From It — Column on Habr

The author of the "Tokenature" column on Habr describes a paradox in writers' attitudes toward artificial intelligence: the profession that protests against AI most vocally is simultaneously one of the few already getting real benefits from the technology.

What Is the Core of Writers' Protest

As an example, the author cites an action at the London Book Fair, where more than ten thousand writers handed out empty books to visitors titled Don't Steal This Book — inside there was nothing but a list of author names who supported the action. The gesture was meant to remind publishers and technology companies that writers' texts are used to train AI without permission or payment.

• Action took place at the London Book Fair
• More than ten thousand writers participated in the protest
• Name of the manifesto book — Don't Steal This Book
• Inside the book — only the names of authors who supported the action, not a single word of text

Why the Author Sees Irony in This

The column author calls himself an AI supporter and is convinced that ultimately technology benefits everyone — but acknowledges that the transition period will be nerve-wracking for many professions. The irony, in his view, is that precisely writers — the loudest protesting group — are already receiving substantial benefits from AI: neural network-based tools speed up book translation into other languages, simplify the creation of audio versions and voiceovers, assist with editing and draft layout — that is, they ease precisely those stages of the publishing process that were previously the slowest and most expensive for an author.

How Writers Are Also Suing AI Companies

The protest action with an empty book is just one of many ways the author industry in recent years has responded to the use of texts for model training. Parallel to public gestures like the book fair action, legal lawsuits by authors and publishers against major AI companies are ongoing in various countries regarding the use of copyrighted texts for model training without permission or payment — this topic remains one of the sharpest friction points between the technology and publishing industries.

Where Writers Are Already Benefiting from AI

The column author does not provide a specific list of tools, but the general logic of his argument relies on a notable trend in recent years: the publishing industry was among the first to embed generative models into its own workflows — from machine translation of books, which noticeably speeds up the release of foreign editions to new markets, to speech synthesis for audiobooks, which reduces voiceover costs for authors without the budget for studio recording with a professional narrator. For independent authors self-publishing books without a major publishing house, such tools are especially noticeable: they remove some of the costs that previously made entering the international market inaccessible for small names.

What This Means

The dispute between writers and technology companies over the use of texts for model training is far from over, but the column on Habr captures a broader trend: the profession's reaction to AI often diverges from who actually benefits from it at the moment — and the author industry here serves as a vivid example.