1. Championing Authors, Illustrators, Artists
    Independent bookstores know how important human beings are to the creative process that defines our industry. ABA champions these creators and advocates for strong support of them. ABA recognizes that some creators see Generative AI as a tool to assist, inspire, and amplify human creativity, but we believe it should never replace human creators. Humans should be the beginning, middle, and end, even if AI is used as a tool.
  2. Protecting Copyright
    Copyright and intellectual property protection are the foundation of the creative world, including the book industry. Authors, illustrators, translators, and all creative professionals depend on these rights for their economic survival. Independent bookstores, in turn, depend on these individuals thriving. Works created by human creators deserve the full protection of existing copyright law, and only human-created work should be eligible for copyright protection. ABA opposes positioning Generative AI as an autonomous creative entity with rights or authority.
  3. Opting In
    ABA strongly supports an opt-in model for the use of copyrighted works in AI training. An author’s work should never be fed into an AI system without their explicit consent and compensation. ABA opposes opt-out frameworks that place the burden on creators to protect their own work. AI developers should be required to obtain licenses for any copyrighted material used in training AI. ABA advocates for a certified symbol or mark to indicate when licensed resources were used to train AI. This certification could come from a private company or theUS government, but it must be regulated and universally adopted.
  4. Providing a Level Playing Field
    AI should be a democratizing force, not one that further concentrates power in the hands of large corporations. Those that use AI and/or “sell” AI must be regulated and checked.
  5. Requiring Transparency
    Readers have the right to know when the content they are buying or reading was produced with the help of Generative AI. Booksellers, publishers, authors, and illustrators all have a responsibility to be transparent about AI’s role in creating, editing, translating, narrating, and marketing books. This transparency must extend to the source data used to train these AI models as well as book metadata, catalog copy, and consumer data. Similarly, technology vendors in the independent bookselling industry should be transparent about their use of AI and the AI built in to their platforms. Transparency is an ethical obligation and should be an industry standard and a regulatory requirement.
  6. Centering Equity, Inclusion, and Representation
    The independent bookselling community has long championed diversity — in the books we carry and the authors we celebrate. Diversity is required to reflect and support the communities we serve and to meet a growing demand in the book business: readers want to see themselves reflected in books and/or use books to discover windows into worlds different than their own. ABA recognizes that AI systems trained on biased datasets can be counter to that priority, perpetuating and amplifying existing inequities in the world and in our industry and potentially further marginalizing underrepresented voices. ABA advocates for AI development practices that are proactively inclusive, and for regulation that requires bias audits and accountability through an equitable and accessible lens. 
  7. Demanding Environmental Responsibility
    ABA is deeply concerned about the environmental impact of large-scale AI systems for ecological and business reasons. Climate change is a significant threat to our customers and communities, and a business challenge for independent bookstores impacted by extreme weather events and the rising costs of electricity and water spurred by AI consumption. 
  8. Ensuring Privacy and Compliance
    AI tools created for indie booksellers must handle customer data, HR information, purchase histories, and business information in a responsible manner that protects privacy. These tools must comply with applicable data protection laws and data sovereignty must be guaranteed. ABA calls on providers to design technology with small business compliance built in from the start to ensure that the security of small businesses and the privacy of their data aren’t at risk, and ABA calls on the government to regulate the AI industry to require this.
  9. Supporting Independent Research 
    The long-term effects of widespread Generative AI use on reading habits, literacy, critical thinking, and democracy are still unknown, but we have reason for concern: we’ve been down this road before with social media. One specific concern is the early research that suggests that over-reliance on AI-generated content may decrease the capacity for critical thinking. (American Psychological Association) Given those risks to our members, their communities, our industry and our democracy, ABA advocates for robust, independent, publicly funded research into AI's individual and societal impacts as well as ways to mitigate these risks.
  10. Accepting Change
    ABA recognizes that the AI landscape is changing rapidly. In line with our purpose as a trade association, ABA will monitor emerging tools, risks, and regulations for our members, and revisit this policy quarterly to make sure our principles continue to reflect our values and support our mission.