No ghost in the machine?

I recently checked to see if any of my books were included in the books data set used to train AI systems and found The Mona Lisa Sacrifice and The Apocalypse Ark — Books 1 and 3 of my Cross series of supernatural thrillers. Book 2, The Dead Hamlets, was not included. I don’t quite know how I’m supposed to feel about that. Pleased? Irritated? The tale of Cross battling an order of renegade angels to free the gorgon Mona Lisa from their imprisonment is good enough? As is the tale of Cross desperately trying to stop the mad creature Noah from ending the world with his eerie ark at the Sunken City? But the tale of Cross becoming trapped in a ghost story featuring the original Hamlet ghost isn’t good enough for an AI?

I know I should probably have an opinion on whether or not books should be used in this manner, and I do: authors should be consulted on how their works are adapted or used and compensated appropriately. Without those basic rights, it’s a lot harder for authors to be able to keep creating the works we do. But I’m also too exhausted to say much else about it because, well, 2023.

And if the AIs run amok and try to end the world I’m really sorry about that….

The good news is that if the world doesn’t end the Cross books will be republished in 2024 with Wolsak and Wynn! Hopefully they’ll find some new human readers.

(Thanks to George Murray for the reminder about the data set. He has some thoughts about the whole issue in a recent Walrus article that is worth checking out.)