Fair Use, Copyright, And Licensing. AI And The Author Business With Alicia Wright

How does generative AI relate to fair use when it comes to copyright? What are the possibilities for AI licensing? Alicia Wright shares her thoughts on generative AI for authors.

In the intro, Publishing leaders share 9 Bold Predictions for 2025 [BookBub]; OpenAI launches Operator [The Verge]; Bertelsmann (who own Penguin Random House) intends to work with OpenAI to expand and accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the media, services, and education sectors; Death Valley — A Thriller.

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Alicia Wright is an intellectual property lawyer for a technology company, and also writes science fiction and mystery as Alicia Ellis. With two degrees in computer science and an MFA in writing popular fiction, she is expertly placed to comment on AI as it applies to writers.

You can listen above or on your favorite podcast app or read the notes and links below. Here are the highlights and the full transcript is below. 

Show Notes

• Using AI as a brainstorming partner and collaborator
• AI as fair use because it creates something transformative
• Using the right prompts to produce quality outputs from AI
• AI is the next technological change in our society
• Licensing your IP for training and AI usage — what to look for in contracts
• Training the AI systems to include your work in generative searches
• Developing your authorial voice and creative confidence
• Uitlizing AI agents in your author business

You can find Alicia at WriterAlicia.com and on social media @WriterAlicia.

Transcript of Interview with Alicia Wright

Joanna: Alicia Wright is an intellectual property lawyer for a technology company, and also writes science fiction and mystery as Alicia Ellis.

With two degrees in computer science and an MFA in writing popular fiction, she is expertly placed to comment on AI as it applies to writers, which we're talking about today. So welcome to the show, Alicia.

Alicia: Thank you so much, Jo. I'm happy to be here.

Joanna: Oh, I'm excited to talk to you. So first up—

Tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing, and also into AI and technology.

Alicia: All right. Well, I should say that I got into AI and technology first. I was always one of those science and math people. Math was my favorite subject in school. Not a lot of people say that, but I loved math. I loved the sciences. I always was reading forward in my textbooks.

Then my mother didn't want us watching TV, so we read a lot of books. I got into writing poetry, writing song lyrics, writing short stories, and the creative side of me came out.

It never occurred to me to write something longer—because I was a math/science person—until I got into law school, and there you have to write all the time. You have to write briefs, you know, these 30 page documents.

Then it occurred to me that, hey, I'd like to write a novel. So I would say the technology interest was always there, and the creative interest, the writing, came later.

In my work as a patent attorney, I have encountered AI-related applications throughout the years, even generative AI technologies as far as 10 years back. So I had an interest in that even before it became relevant to the writing industry.

Joanna: So when did you get into writing fiction? How many years have you been writing fiction, as well as doing your incredible job?

Alicia: I have been writing fiction, specifically long form fiction, for as long as I have been a lawyer. The time is almost exact. I know this because I was in my final year of law school and sort of had this crisis. Like, I'm graduating law school, do I want to be a lawyer?

I spent time thinking about that. Just sat down for really a day and went through what I would do if it wasn't law. I decided that I did want to do law, but I also wanted to write novels.

So as soon as I graduated law school, I enrolled in some local writing courses. So I've been practicing law and writing for the same amount of time.

Joanna: Which is approximately?

Alicia: 17 years. I got into indie publishing in maybe 2013, but I've been writing for 17 and a half years.

Joanna: Brilliant. So you mentioned there that you, as a patent attorney, you look at AI applications. You did mention using a bit of generative technology there.

How do you currently use AI tools as part of your creative and business processes?

Alicia: In my business work, well, I see a lot of AI technologies in what I'm writing patent applications for, and that's what I was referring to before.

In managing a patent portfolio at the cybersecurity firm where I work right now, I definitely use AI technologies to help inventors organize their thoughts when they submit to us to do analyses. Sometimes I'm dealing with a huge patent portfolio, and AI can help organize the analyses and my thoughts on that.

In my writing, I use it mostly at the planning stages as a brainstorming partner. I love AI as a brainstorming partner.

I always tell it that it's my junior partner because it tends to go off on its own, and I like to reel it in to run the show, if you will.

I give it my ideas. Often I'll ask it to, say, “Give me five ideas on how to put these things together,” or, “Give me 10 ideas on how to put these things together.” Even if they're bad ideas, it helps me sort of organize my thoughts. Like, why don't I like these ideas?

So, together, we walk through what I want to do. We create a Save the Cat outline. Which I usually start it off once we have all the ideas on the table, I ask it to create the Save the Cat outline.

Usually, I have a lot of changes. We make those changes, and then we'll break it down into a scene list that follows the three act structure.

I often have it generate character sketches and setting sketches — 

because, honestly, I'm no good with thinking about what does this setting look like. What kind of house is this? Bricks? Facade? I don't care. So the AI is really helpful with that.

There's a lot of editing, a lot of back and forth. AI is a great partner for brainstorming and plotting.

When we get into the writing, my authorial voice is really important to me, in part, probably because I have diagnosed OCD. I have experimented with using AI in pretty much every aspect of my process, but for me, personally, the writing part I have to do. I would spend more time editing AI output than I would have just writing it myself.

I tend to use dictation and input the dictation output into ChatGPT to clean it up —

— and they'll catch the dictation error, so I have a much cleaner copy going forward. Then when I'm done writing, I'll use a little AI for developmental editing.

Joanna: I love that. You sound similar to me in the way you're using it. You're using the word ‘partner', your junior partner, your collaborator. You use the word ‘we', which I really like as well because I feel that too.

Like with Claude, I feel this is almost my—not so much co-writer—but like you said, collaborator. It really is a backwards and forwards way of doing it.

I can hear the smile in your voice, and I have a smile in my voice as well, because this is fun, right? This makes it more fun for us.

Alicia: It's so fun, and I feel like my work is better, that this brings out a better side of me. Connections that I hadn't made, problems that I didn't foresee. It's having a partner, so that it's improved. It's not just me, it's me plus some artificial intelligence.

Joanna: Yes. So we could geek out about how amazing it is all day, but I did want to ask you about some of the objections that authors have. You did this great talk at Author Nation, and you were so clear on it.

I don't think there are many people in our community who have degrees in computer science and law, and an MFA, and are an active indie author. I think you're the only person, right?

Alicia: Maybe.

Joanna: Maybe.

Let's start with one of the most common objections from authors, which is, “AI companies stole our work.”

What are your thoughts on this, and how does it relate to fair use?

Alicia: So when I think of the word stolen, I think of an illegal taking. So I think, are we talking about copyright infringement here? I would say, in my opinion, that the work is not stolen.

The reason I phrase it that way, in my opinion, is because I'm sure a lot of folks know, there's ongoing litigation about whether the use of copyrighted works in training data is copyright infringement.

Until those are act