Authors Guild drafted a clause to block AI training uses
Its March 2023 model clause lets authors reserve rights over their books' use in training generative AI.
- Historical event
- March 1, 2023
- First source published
- March 1, 2023
- Site publication
- September 18, 2026
The record
On 1 March 2023, the Authors Guild, a US professional organisation for published writers, announced it had drafted a model contract clause "to prohibit the use of an author's work for training artificial intelligence technologies without the author's express permission." The Guild's own announcement states the clause was added to its Model Trade Book Contract and its Literary Translation Model Contract, and that authors and agents could ask publishers to insert it into their own agreements.
What the documents show
The announcement reproduces the clause's text: it reserves to the author the right to reproduce or otherwise use the work for training generative AI, denying the publisher or platform that right, and denying it the right to sublicense such use, "unless [Publisher/Platform] obtains Author's specific and express permission to do so." The Guild frames this as a response to publisher and platform contract language, sometimes explicit and sometimes phrased as "internal purposes" or "data mining," that it says could otherwise permit AI training uses by default. The Guild's current model-clauses resource, retrieved 16 September 2026, shows the single 2023 clause has since grown into a broader set covering audiobook narration, translation and cover artwork, and governing both an author's own use of generative AI and a publisher's use of it in producing the book, described there as the Guild's continuing advocacy tool rather than a term any publisher is obligated to accept.
Why it stays interesting
A model clause is a proposal, not a market standard: the Guild's own material states that publishers are "free to adopt" the clauses, meaning their presence in a contract still depends on a publisher's agreement or an author's negotiating leverage. This is an editorial note: a writer or agent checking a specific contract for AI-related language should compare it against the Guild's actual clause text, reproduced in its 2023 announcement, rather than assume any given publisher has adopted it merely because the Guild recommends it.
What to read next
The complaints filed four months later in Kadrey v. Meta Platforms and Silverman v. OpenAI describe, from a litigant's perspective, the kind of unauthorised training use this clause is designed to prevent by contract, and reading the two together shows two different responses, drafting a clause and filing a lawsuit, to the same underlying concern within the same year.
- Does a given publishing contract contain language resembling the Guild's clause, silence on AI training, or a grant of rights broad enough to permit it?
- How has the Guild's original single clause expanded, on its current resource page, to cover audio, translation and artwork uses separately?
- What would an author need to know about a publisher's actual AI practices to decide whether requesting this clause matters for a specific book?
A clause an organisation drafts and a clause a publisher signs are two different documents, and the distance between them is exactly the negotiation this model language was written to start.
Sources & reading trail
The Guild's own March 2023 announcement and the full text of the original model clause.
Source published: 1 March 2023 · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
The Guild's current, expanded set of model AI clauses, as retrieved 16 September 2026.
Source published: Not established · Retrieved: 16 September 2026
Reports, filings, records and studies establish the entry; the reading of why it stays interesting is Chapter Ledger editorial analysis. This retrospective draft does not imply the site published on the event date.
Continue reading
- Two lawsuits named a shadow library as an AI training source
- Seventeen novelists sued an AI company as a proposed class
- A guild's 2015 initiative named specific unfair contract terms
- Browse the complete the ledger archive
Sources & reading trail
- Model Clause Prohibiting AI Training
Source published: March 1, 2023 · Retrieved: September 16, 2026 - Authors Guild AI-Related Model Publishing Contract Clauses
Retrieved: September 16, 2026
The documents above establish the record. The reading and the questions are this publication’s editorial analysis, written after the fact.
Published September 18, 2026, not on the date of the event described.