Australian writers and literary agents are worried after Black Books asked its authors to consent to their work being used to train artificial intelligence, according to The Guardian.

I have made a few editorial comments in the text.

This story should come under the heading of What the Fuck! But that’s too crude.

Black Books is asking its authors to train little Triffids to grow up to be big Triffids and devour them.

The Melbourne publisher gave them 72 hours to enter into third-party agreements with an unnamed AI company.

Or else what?

The writers were asked to grant Black Inc “the right to reproduce or use, adapt and exploit the work in connection with the development of any software program, including, without limitation, training, testing, validation and the deployment of a machine learning or generative artificial intelligence system”.

As kingpin lit agent Lyn Tranter said, “The industry is in such serious shit at the moment … what with the takeover of Text and Affirm, it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Black Books said by authorising their works to be used by an unspecified AI company, authors would unlock “new revenue streams” with their works receiving “increased visibility and credibility”.

This is absolute bullshit. There will be no new revenue streams.

“I feel like we’re being asked to sign our own death warrant,” said Laura Jean McKay, author of Holiday in Cambodia, published with Black Inc a decade ago and shortlisted for three literary awards.

McKay says she received the addendum to her contract on Friday, and was worried that three business days was not long enough to decipher what copyright Black Inc was asking her to sign.

“To be honest, I don’t think they [Black Inc] know what they’re doing.”

Melbourne literary agent Jenny Darling wondered why publishers were brokering deals with AI companies at all.

“Publishers are in the business of publishing books,” Darling said. “Why are they entering into agreements with AI companies? Is their business not big enough, don’t they know how to make money publishing books any more?”

Black Inc. is an imprint of Schwartz Media, publisher of titles such as The Saturday Paper, The Monthly andAustralian Foreign Affairs. The founder of Schwartz media and former Chair, Morry Schwartz, has been criticised for using his ‘platform’ to support Israel.