How we are thinking about AI at Pan Macmillan

As book publishers, our job is to bring the brilliant work of our authors, illustrators and narrators to market and build an audience for them. If managed appropriately, AI can help us do this by improving our marketing effectiveness and making our books more discoverable. How it develops will be subject to great scrutiny. Whilst it has the potential to deliver benefits, we believe it’s vital that the right ethical and legislative guardrails are put in place around AI development, to protect the rights of authors, illustrators and other creators. 

At Pan Macmillan, we have pledged to put our authors, illustrators, narrators and our people first in relation to AI. When we use AI, it is as a tool to encourage innovation and to enhance our effectiveness in our support of our authors' and illustrators' work to reach more readers and listeners. Within our business we can see how AI assistance built into our workflows and core processes could be transformative for the future - for example, helping us to bring books to readers’ attention through AI-boosted metadata processes, and an AI-augmented approach to digital marketing.

In publishing, success thrives on variables like discoverability, distinctiveness, and reader loyalty. At its heart are the authors, illustrators and narrators who combine their creativity with unique lived experience to create compelling stories. Our job as publishers is to serve and support such creatives and to champion human voices and their human stories; when we use it, AI must be focused on the same goals.

At Pan Macmillan we are navigating the AI landscape through strategic partnerships, such as with Holtzbrinck Publishing Group’s wholly-owned AI company, CHAPTR and with our industry body, The Publisher’s Association.  We aspire to be ethical leaders in our application of AI as a tool for our business and we work hand in hand with them to achieve this.

Our AI principles and policies

• We put our authors, illustrators and our people first in relation to AI
• We use AI as a tool to spark our own creativity and ensure that the training, tools, and development are available for safe and ethical use
• We aspire to be ethical leaders in the field of AI, learning about AI safety and ethics from recognised experts as we go
• We are transparent about how and where we use AI tools and we seek to measure and report on the impact of AI projects
• We champion diversity, equity, and inclusion to help reduce AI biases or inequalities
• We strictly observe data privacy, security and IP management principles when it comes to AI
• We work with industry bodies and our group companies worldwide to bring to bear on AI developments and legislation, ideas, opportunities and concerns as well as the rights of our people, authors and illustrators.

We understand the concerns of authors, illustrators, narrators and other creators regarding the use of copyrighted works to train LLMs for generative AI purposes. Over time, we believe legal action is likely to provide much-needed guidance for our industry on the legality of using copyrighted works to train language model generative AI. Meanwhile, we are working to actively identify potential infringements where we can and we will be grateful to be notified of any evidence that authors and other creators or their agents gather that we should be aware of. Our ongoing piracy work is of relevance too, and this continues, with a heightened sense of its importance.