The Writer's Union of Canada has sent an email to its members, titled Global Author Coalition Launches Ethical AI Charter.
October 14, 2026
For Immediate ReleaseGlobal Author Coalition Launches Ethical AI Charter
As this country’s cultural sector continues to wait for decisive government action to regulate artificial intelligence development and implementation, The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) joins with global partners on the launch of a sectoral Global Charter on Ethical AI. The charter outlines best practices for AI adoption and use within professional creative practice, with the protection and support of human creativity at the forefront.Built on UNESCO’s 10 core principles of responsible AI, the Charter has at its core the CLEAR framework to protect the livelihoods of creators.
“The Union is proud to be a founding partner on this charter,” said TWUC Chair, Kim Fahner. “It’s the kind of responsible, ethical, ambitious thinking authors have been calling for from governments around the world. But we can only wait so long for government to act. We have work to do, and unregulated AI is in our way, so we’ve erected our own responsible guardrails.”
TWUC thanks its colleague organizations in the UK, USA, Australia, and New Zealand for all their work on this cooperative project. We’re proud to stand united in the call for greater oversight and regulation of a technology that increasingly indicates it requires both.
TWUC is also aware that many authors feel “ethical AI” cannot be achieved in the current environment where training data has been taken without regard to copyright law, data centres are being imposed on unwilling communities, the environmental impact of the technology has not been properly studied, and AI’s own developers admit again and again that they do not have control of their own creation. The tech sector’s blatant disregard for authors’ rights remains at the forefront of the Union’s advocacy on AI.
“The Charter is a living document that puts down a marker for what we’re seeing as the increasing use of AI tools in our own sector,” noted TWUC CEO John Degen. “Our core concerns remain, but we wanted foundational principles on the record.”
The Global Charter of Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries is jointly launched by the UK’s Society of Authors, the Creators’ Rights Alliance (CRA) in the UK, the Authors Guild in the United States, the Australian Society of Authors, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the New Zealand Society of Authors.
We have replied to the Union with the following, and encourage all other artists and writers to do the same.
To acknowledge the pain your community is feeling and still signing this shows a fundamental failure in critical thinking and understanding of what creatives are going through.
The VERY FIRST POINT is to "Promote... generative AI." I do not accept this. I will never, under any circumstances, accept the promotion of generative AI in creative spaces, because there is absolutely no way to ethically or responsibly promote theft and plagiarism. This 'charter' is all about end-user considerations and how we should tell ourselves that it's okay, we're using the theft machine for 'good' before putting our colleagues out of work by stealing their voice. Since there are no actual tangible goals, this is nothing more than running PR for big tech companies.
What are the 'technological benefits' that outweigh the cost of the social harm currently being done by generative AI? This technology is spreading fascism and propaganda and racism at an alarming rate. I can't even enjoy a poem or a picture of a sunset anymore without worry that it's a diffusion or an algorithm!
UNESCO's own suggestions are based on nothing more than delusion, ignoring that our current AI systems are rotten to the core, trained on violence, racism, and child sexual abuse material. "The use of AI systems must not go beyond what is necessary to achieve a legitimate aim." Who determines what's necessary? What is the definition of legitimate? Is swarming Amazon with dozens of generated books a month necessary or legitimate? Are we going to be accepting slop 'authors' into the union now? Rally against ISBN to encourage them to allow AI generated books? Will we have to hear about how using generative AI to 'create' a book is now an accessibility tool to help people who don't want to struggle their way through actually writing a book?
Because in this email you say it's about increasing regulation, but none of the principals are actually regulatory in nature. The CLEAR framework is the only thing that talks about what we should expect of technological companies, and even then it suggests artists pull up the ladder behind them, providing tech companies the 'legitimate' tools to ruin emerging and struggling artists. Even if I lived in a world where creatives were able to license their work and be credited by these AI companies, I still would not want it, because I value human creation.
You have sabotaged your own members and given a seal of approval to the worst people in our society.
I cannot continue to be a member in an organization willing to accept plagiarism, theft, and intentional destruction of art and humanity for profit. I am calling for the resignation of all those on the board and in the executive who supported this decision.
Michelle
For over 12 years I have had the rare privilege to make my living entirely from my writing as a novelist and short story author. And I achieved this not through traditional means, but by embracing new technology and methods to get my writing out to a world of readers. My co-author and I have embraced learning to code, learning to market, all the ugly parts of our work that aren't the writing we so dearly love.
"AI" is not just another new technology however. It is a complex set of algorithms built on stolen labour -- MY writing, including at least a dozen of my novels -- and wielded by the richest men on earth to destroy the power of labour, and the value of creative work. As you so cavalierly acknowledged and dismissed, some of us writers acknowledge that there is no ethnical use of "AI".
Since the proliferation of "AI", it has primarily been used as a form of malware, to make people's lives worse. To assist the efforts of scammers and plagiarists. I have witnessed as these scammers peddling "slop" have flooded bookstores with so much stolen gibberish writing, that real authors livings, such as my own, have plummeted. Not because readers want or support this work even, they are not replacing us with this "AI" word vomit, they are merely flooding the market with so much garbage that readers struggle to find real works they wish to read. Discoverability has been killed, when it was always, at best, a struggle.
The "ethical AI" you describe does not exist. To call it a fantasy or a fiction would be too generous to you. It is a delusion, used to rhetorically launder the ambitions of the publishers and tech billionaires to destroy us and our work. Perhaps you forgot that you do not work for the publishers, you are supposed to represent writers.
Even if this delusion of yours existed, a future where art is created by computer programs alone is too dismal to even contemplate for long. But that is what you work in service of, despite the meaningless rhetoric of your endorsed statements that are vague at best. There are words for people such as yourselves, most of them too much for a civil letter. So I'll suffice to say traitors and scabs.
I will not be a part of a union run by advocates for scabs. I call upon the entire board to rescind this decision and resign. If that doesn't happen, I shall not be renewing my membership in the Spring. I shall be sharing this message with friends and colleagues, urging them to do the same.
Joshua Keep
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