Authors who distribute and sell through Amazon KDP may be invited to take advantage of AI-powered Kindle Translate (in beta), which can translate a book from English to Spanish or from German to English. (More languages to come.) Authors can preview the translation before publication, and the resulting AI translation will be labeled as such and made available for sale for Amazon Kindle. It will also be eligible for inclusion in KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited. Authors can publish the AI translation if they hold or obtain the underlying right to pursue a translation. Read the announcement.
However, a wholly AI-generated translation is not copyrightable under current US law. The situation is different in the UK, where a 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents Act does recognize copyright in purely computer-generated works. For a computer-generated literary work (which can include an AI translation), the author is the person who made the arrangements necessary for the creation of the work and is often the party who initiates or controls the process. So far, German law does not have a specific statute like the UK that grants copyright to fully AI-generated works.
Recently, the Book Industry Study Group hosted a session on AI and translation, featuring Fred Freeman of UK-based GlobeScribe (an AI translation service), who has consulted with professionals on the copyright issues at play. “This is a highly complex and evolving area,” Freeman said. He had to concede that US laws create some uncertainty around commercial exploitation of AI translations, even though GlobeScribe assigns all rights in the translation to the client. “We do think that having a chain of copyright assignment is certainly very useful, and our understanding is that therefore, under the Berne Convention, if a US customer comes to us and translates their books, they then have the assignment agreement and they then are able to have the copyright.” However, he added, “It’s an evolving issue. There are different opinions on it. None of it has been properly tested.”
I reached out to Mary Rasenberger at the Authors Guild about this issue, and while she confirmed the AI translation is not copyright protected under current US law, the underlying book is, which would make it infringing for anyone to copy or publish an AI translation unless they held the rights to the underlying book. That said, she believes that we’ll see an explosion of piracy related to AI translations. “Authors and publishers should be on the lookout for pirate translations, and we can try to help them get the pirated copies taken down,” she commented via email.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
