Library and Archives Canada cracking down on AI books amid copyright threats

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has updated its ISBN policy to limit registrations for AI-generated books and other content in an effort to protect Canadian authors and their creative sector. ISBNs, used to identify specific editions of books, play a vital role in ensuring widespread distribution and maximizing a book's sales potential. LAC allows eligible Canadian publishers to request free ISBNs for printed books, ebooks, audio books, and instructional DVDs.

The Canadian Authors Association, Canadian Publishers Association, and other industry groups are pleased with the updated policy as it helps safeguard human-authored creative work from being replaced by AI-generated content. AI's impact on intellectual property is a growing concern, with several Canadian news publishers recently suing AI company Anthropic for allegedly using their copyrighted content to train their large language models without proper licensing.

Under the new policy, LAC requires publishers to declare that their publications were written by human authors when registering with ISBN Canada. AI tools are permitted for limited support tasks only, such as brainstorming ideas, checking grammar, or formatting. However, the quantity of ISBNs for works whose content is primarily generated by AI is limited.

While LAC acknowledges that ISBN registration does not provide copyright protection, the Canadian Authors Association expressed hope that the policy change would lead to further measures to protect human-authored creative work. They await information on how the self-declaration of human authorship will be monitored and verified by LAC, as well as potential penalties for falsely declaring a book to be human-authored.

Publishers and authors have faced a surge of low-quality, unverifiable, AI-generated products in recent years, which not only dilutes the market but also poses risks to public trust due to potential disinformation. The federal government's initial AI strategy, announced in June, did not address copyright protections extensively. However, the ministry has since indicated that further work is underway, with a focus on creators' roles in developing cultural sovereignty protections.