By Odin Rasco<\/p>\n
It takes only a look around to see AI technology is in the midst of a meteoric rise. The proliferation of it was most recently highlighted during the Super Bowl, with nearly a quarter of the game\u2019s ads (15 out of 66) involving AI in some way, according to a report by Adweek<\/a>. Considering ChatGPT had more than 800 million users weekly in 2025 \u2014 and that the platform is helping design everything from toothpaste to specialty Coca-Cola products \u2013 Resourcera estimates that around 1 in 10 people alive today use AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n Part of the appeal of the tech is its user-friendliness, allowing anyone to give an AI model instructions in plain language, no coding required. Because AIs like ChatGPT or Anthropic\u2019s Claude are Large Language Models, trained on nearly immeasurable samples of the written word, many users turn to them to generate essays, cover letters, summaries and other kinds of writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n But for individuals who engage with writing not as a task to get done but rather as a craft to hone \u2013 journalists, authors, screenwriters and educators \u2013 the rapid spread of AI has raised multiple concerns about how the new technology is impacting their fields.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI feel that in a short period of time I\u2019ve become very counter-cultural without meaning to, because I have a kind of like \u2018kill it with fire\u2019 attitude towards [AI],\u201d author and educator Lisa Locascio Nighthawk<\/a> remarked. \u201cI didn\u2019t consent to this, you know? And I guess, you know, we don\u2019t get to consent to the cultural changes that impact us; but I don\u2019t appreciate how it\u2019s all happened in what feels like about two years.\u201d<\/p>\n Tech-enabled thought theft?<\/p>\n Nighthawk is the author of New York Times Editors\u2019 Choice novel \u201cOpen Me,\u201d as well as executive director of the Mendocino Coast Writers\u2019 Conference and chair of the Antioch MFA in Creative Writing. Her own words, though unwillingly, may now be a small part of how one AI model works: \u201cOpen Me\u201d was one of the more than seven million books Anthropic downloaded or digitized to support the training of its large language models.\u00a0<\/p>\n Anthropic was taken to court for its unlicensed use of books in its LLM training in Bartz v. Anthropic, one of the first major lawsuits brought by authors against an AI company. The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a summary judgement on the case authored by Judge William Alsup on June 23, 2025. The court\u2019s judgment found Anthropic\u2019s use of books, many of which were obtained on pirating websites, \u201cinherently, irredeemably infringing.\u201d The court did maintain, however, that use of legally-obtained books in the training of an LLM constituted fair use.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Author\u2019s Guild, the oldest professional organization in the United States for published writers, strongly disagreed with the fair use portion of the judgement, publishing a response<\/a> stating \u201cIt feels as though the court rushed to issue a decision without fully understanding the copyright law and legal issues or the potential harm.\u201d<\/p>\n The class action suit was later settled out of court, with Anthropic agreeing to pay an award of $1.5 billion to the rightsholders of 500,000 titles out of the 7 million copies of books it used to train its models, meaning each title is expected to net $3,000 (to be split between the author and publisher).\u00a0<\/p>\n For Nighthawk, the potential payout from the settlement doesn\u2019t address the feelings that come from knowing her work was used to train an AI without her permission.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s impossible to put a dollar figure on that,\u201d Nighthawk explained. \u201cI mean, I worked on that novel for 7 years. It\u2019s galling, especially given how hard it is to do anything as a writer. You just feel really disempowered, basically.\u201d<\/p>\n After urging from friends and colleagues to look into the Anthropic settlement, Sacramento-based author Naomi J. Williams<\/a> discovered her 2015 novel \u201cLandfalls\u201d was another book Anthropic may have used without permission to train its AI.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are working on starvation wages, right?\u201d Williams noted. \u201cWhen I found my book in that database, I said, \u2018Woohoo, $3,000.\u2019 I haven\u2019t seen a dime of that settlement yet \u2026 Certainly I\u2019m not counting on it to pay bills or anything, but I mean, there\u2019s something a little bit creepy about knowing that the work of your own mind has been used to help train a machine.\u201d<\/p>\n Williams, who has also published multiple short stories<\/a> and essays, is co-director of CapLit, a reading series and literary organization founded in Sacramento in 2025. Although she\u2019s had experiences with AI that have raised some red flags, Williams doesn\u2019t see the technology as an apocalyptic issue for authors so far.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m 62, and so I very much came of age even before the internet, right?\u201d Williams mused. \u201cSo, I\u2019ve seen these big changes come and everybody gets up in arms of \u2018this is the death of literature\u2019 or whatever, and I feel like I\u2019ve seen enough changes come and go, and the much talked of death of books and literature has yet to occur. So, although I\u2019ve been alarmed by some of the AI related stuff I\u2019ve seen, I\u2019m not squarely in the doom and gloom, \u2018this is just horrible\u2019 camp.\u201d<\/p>\n Hallucinogenic feedback loops for journalism?<\/p>\n When it comes to ethical concerns stemming from AI, writers\u2019 concerns don\u2019t stop at unauthorized use of their work to train the models. Journalist Krys Shahin, a Sac State alumni, recently took a deep dive into the potential ecological impacts from AI data centers<\/a> including air pollution, water use and energy use.\u00a0<\/p>\n Shahin\u2019s reporting started with trying to find the source for the pervasive claim that an AI prompt uses the equivalent of a glass of water; though that estimate is disputed, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute found that large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of water a day.<\/p>\n \u201cThat equals roughly the daily demand for a community of 50,000 people,\u201d Shahin wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n Although there are real ecological impacts to consider, AI is not without its positives, according to Shahin.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m not anti-AI inherently, I think AI can be used for a lot of good things,\u201d Shahin acknowledged. \u201cI think it\u2019s great that Cal Fire uses AI to help detect fires in really remote areas. I think it\u2019s good that local municipal companies and organizations use it for road maintenance or just generic city health. I think these are all great things, but once it breaches into the creative aspects of things, the things that require human connection, that require human touch, it gets a little bit more finicky.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the finicky cases, according to Shahin, is when journalism and AI overlap.<\/p>\n \u201cMy main concern is the lack of regulation with AI, especially in such an ethical field like journalism,\u201d Shahin explained. \u201cWe, as humans, have to make a lot of decisions based on our own past experiences; what we\u2019ve learned going through journalism school or just doing journalism and talking to people. Those chatbots can\u2019t make the same decisions that I can. They can\u2019t make any decisions, actually. They just feed you back what you want it to.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Garbage people\u2019 with \u2018scam book\u2019 objectives<\/p>\n Though the massive quantities of water needed to cool data centers are concern enough, for self-published authors like Sacramento-based Wayne Campbell<\/a>, there\u2019s also the struggle to grab a buyer\u2019s attention amidst a constant flood of AI-generated titles on ebook storefronts.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs somebody who\u2019s in the self-published space, you see that all the time with the crowded field in Kindle Digital Publishing, where the market has been just completely flooded by garbage written by garbage people who are only seeking a profit,\u201d Campbell remarked. \u201cThey\u2019ll type in a prompt into an LLM and have a complete novel or novella, push it out with a garbage cover and a garbage blurb priced at $0.99 and they\u2019ll do that at volume. KDP is just completely awash with that stuff even with the protections that they say that they have.\u201d<\/p>\n A 2024 NPR article<\/a> backs up Campbell\u2019s observations, with others in the self-published space finding the marketplace filled with AI-generated \u201cscam books.\u201d<\/p>\n As time moves forward and companies and consumers continue to use AI, more concerns are likely to crop up. Some, like Nighthawk, believe AI may be a bubble fit to burst. Yet, even if that ends up being the case, the technology itself, and the questions that come along with it, won\u2019t be going anywhere.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing is, it\u2019s here,\u201d Williams admitted. \u201cWe can no longer live in a world where it does not exist.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was funded by the City of Sacramento\u2019s Arts and Creative Economy Journalism Grant to\u00a0Solving Sacramento<\/a>. Following our journalism code of ethics and protocols, the city had no editorial influence over this story and no city official reviewed this story before it was published. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, CapRadio, Hmong Daily News, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer.\u00a0Sign up for our \u201cSac Art Pulse\u201d newsletter here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Odin Rasco It takes only a look around to see AI technology is in the midst of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":200543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[93167,93168,93169,93170,121,123,122,93171],"class_list":{"0":"post-200542","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sacramento","8":"tag-ai-and-sacramento-writers","9":"tag-author-lisa-locascio-nighthawk","10":"tag-author-naomi-j-willaims","11":"tag-author-wayne-campbell","12":"tag-sacramento","13":"tag-sacramento-headlines","14":"tag-sacramento-news","15":"tag-writer-krys-shahin"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/200543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}