Medium pay in the AI World

Will Medium Sell Your Words?

How would that work?

Tony Stubblebine, Medium’s chief executive, has recently floated the idea on Mastodon of legally selling authors’ works to companies working on artificial intelligence. He asked for our input. (Link to the thread here.)

I read those posts and had an initial “NO WAY!” emotional response at first. I don’t make enough now, do not understand how I get paid what I get, and worry about the security of my words.

Then my always-ON-never-quiet brain started batting the thought around. According to Coach Tony, I retain all rights; Medium’s default is “all rights reserved” to the writer. But the intellectual property laws are complex and are probably ill-equipped to manage a rapidly-changing digital commodity like the stories we write and publish on Medium or one of its publications.

I have questions.

• What would happen if one of my stories was sold and some of the verbiage was changed for some purpose? Would I still own it?
• Is the law sufficient to protect my rights if no words are changed? Am I rich enough to defend myself? (No, I am not.)
• If not, who would?

The legal system that governs Medium as a platform holding the intellectual property is very slow to change and does not respond well or quickly to completely new inputs to it. Google recognized this when those two smart guys hired a few math geniuses and invented “search” — then hired another genius and learned how to profit from it.

What artificial intelligence wants to/can do to writing is one of those completely new inputs. Nobody knows what will or even could happen. But we will all find out, won’t we?

As mentioned, intellectual property law is complex and part of the same legal system that does not move fast. Thus, it will not change nearly as fast as it needs to.

As an aside, keep in mind where new or changed laws start. Try to imagine that group of highly partisan elected “representatives” even wanting to deal with this complexity.

AI is in its very infancy, and so far, is a terrible replacement for human creativity. We have all read articles created by the ChatGPT app, for example, and can pretty easily tell that it is not written by a very complex human.

BUT…

There are plenty of machine language and math experts out there working hard on this to make it better and more realistic. It won’t take long before it really is a challenge to human creativity. What will we, the writers, have to say? What will the data holders, like Medium, say when the AI money comes a-calling?

As an executive in charge of a very valuable commodity, Medium, Tony Stubblebine’s fiduciary responsibility is to his shareholders first, and everybody else, including the writers, after. He will do what he has done with Medium: make it good for him and a few others and throw a few coins on the ground for the thousands of the rest of us to “fight” over.

I would still vote “no,” but I am a realist. Our stuff will soon enough be sold and while we might make something from the sale, I have my doubts. Good thing I do not do this for a reliable revenue stream. I am sorry for those who do and feel less confident that their intellectual property rights will be maintained.