The UK’s Society of Authors (SoA) has withdrawn from the Charter of Ethical AI Use in the Creative Industries, which it helped launch less than two weeks ago, after criticism from its own members. The Bookseller reports that members were emailed on October 21 to thank them for their feedback and to say the Society was pulling out. CEO Anna Ganley told the magazine that she has spoken with all of the charter’s partners and that the SoA will “pause, listen to members’ views and take these back to our partners.” A discussion about next steps will take place at the Society’s AGM on November 19, and members have been invited to share their views in a survey. The charter itself is still live, and The Bookseller says no other organisation has withdrawn so far.

According to the SoA’s announcement on its website, the charter was created with the Creators’ Rights Alliance (CRA) in the UK, the Authors Guild in the US, the Australian Society of Authors, the Writers’ Union of Canada, and the New Zealand Society of Authors. It aims to define how generative AI services should be deployed to protect and support human creators, in the absence of any meaningful government regulation. Industry bodies such as agents, publishers, and prize bodies were invited to sign up and pledge to use generative AI only in a transparent, responsible, and ethical way. The charter builds on UNESCO’s ten core principles of responsible AI and commits signatories to respect the CLEAR framework for protecting creators’ livelihoods. Authors including Sir Kazuo Ishiguro, Tracy Chevalier, and Kester Brewin publicly backed the initiative, and Chevalier called it “a step in the right direction towards transparency.”

The backlash followed quickly. Members objected that they had not been consulted before the charter went public, and some felt that a framework for the “ethical” use of AI sat uneasily with the Society’s stance on the technology. On October 15, Ganley published a blog post on the SoA website apologising for failing to communicate the charter’s purpose and insisting that the Society’s position on generative AI is unchanged. She wrote that the SoA considers the technology harmful to the creative industries, to writers’ livelihoods, and to the environment, and that “there can never be any truly ethical use of generative AI,” because LLMs have been trained on copyrighted works without permission or payment.

In the same post, Ganley explained the thinking behind the charter. She said the SoA is concerned that organisations in the publishing industry are using generative AI “in the shadows,” where its use and impact cannot be monitored, and that it wants public, transparent commitments from publishers about whether, how, and where the technology is being used. The charter, she wrote, is meant to start urgent discussion so that those who strongly oppose generative AI can push others to act responsibly. She also noted that the charter would be discussed at the AGM.

Speaking to The Bookseller after the withdrawal, Ganley said authors must have meaningful choice, consent, and control over their work, and that the publishing industry is built on human writers, illustrators, translators, narrators, and photographers. She said the priority should be looking after creative workers rather than the US tech giants that exploit the UK books ecosystem. The Society is also supporting the Australian Society of Authors in writing to Australia’s attorney general and prime minister about the government’s AI copyright proposals, which include an opt-out scheme and a statutory or extended collective licence for AI training on material deemed “unprotected” online. The dispute shows how divided the writing world is on where the line on AI should be drawn.