AI OVERLORDS AGREE TO TOSS HUMAN WRITERS A FEW PENNIES BEFORE OBLITERATING THEIR CAREERS
UK Announces “Revolutionary” Plan To Pay Authors Literal Pennies While Their Life’s Work Is Consumed By Digital Text Monsters
FINANCIAL COMPENSATION OR ELABORATE RUSE?
In what experts are calling “the most patronizing gesture since Marie Antoinette suggested cake consumption,” UK licensing bodies announced a groundbreaking collective license allowing authors to be paid approximately £0.0000001 per book that digital brain-blobs use to learn how to replace them.
The Copyright Licensing Agency (CLA), directed by organizations with fancy acronyms no one understands, will implement this “first-of-its-kind” license this summer, just in time for authors to afford one (1) celebratory ice cream cone before their industry collapses entirely.
“This is a historic moment for creator rights,” said Percival Moneycounter, CEO of the CLA. “Authors will now receive compensation roughly equivalent to finding a penny on the street each time a silicon-based thinking rectangle devours their entire literary output and regurgitates it in a slightly different arrangement of words.”
MATH THAT DOESN’T ADD UP
The license will ensure that when an algorithm consumes 10,000 books to learn how to write like a human, each author will receive enough money to perhaps buy a single paperclip. According to made-up statistics, authors can expect to earn upwards of £4.72 per year from this revolutionary arrangement.
“It’s like being mugged but the thief leaves you bus fare,” explained Dr. Obvious Exploitation, Professor of Digital Colonialism at the University of Financial Despair. “These language learning contraptions are absorbing centuries of human creativity and the best we can do is offer a collective license that pays less than what you’d find between your sofa cushions.”
THE FINE PRINT
Sources confirm the payment structure involves complex calculations designed specifically to ensure no author ever receives enough money to challenge the system. The formula reportedly involves dividing the author’s word count by the number of semicolons, multiplied by the phase of the moon, divided by infinity.
“What most people don’t realize is that 87% of this money will go toward administrative fees,” revealed insider Leaky McGovt, speaking on condition that we buy him three drinks. “The remaining 13% will be distributed among approximately 2.7 million authors, which mathematically works out to roughly f@#k all.”
WRITERS RESPOND WITH ENTHUSIASM AND/OR CRUSHING DESPAIR
British authors have greeted the news with the kind of forced enthusiasm typically reserved for receiving socks at Christmas.
“Oh wonderful, they’re paying us for our intellectual property. How novel,” said bestselling author J.K. Whiting, who asked not to be identified by her real name. “I was worried my decades of creative work would be stolen without any compensation whatsoever, so this microscopic payment feels like a real win.”
Others were less diplomatic. “Are you sh!tting me?” said Booker Prize nominee Francis Wordsmith while drinking heavily at 11am. “They’re literally feeding our life’s work into a machine designed to make us obsolete and calling it a victory when they toss us enough money for half a sandwich.”
THE BRIGHT FUTURE OF AUTOMATED LITERATURE
Tech industry spokesman Chad Valuation praised the arrangement as “totally fair and not at all predatory,” noting that authors should feel grateful their works are being used by “the most advanced technology ever created instead of just being read by boring humans.”
According to industry projections, by 2026, approximately 97% of all fiction will be generated by machines trained on books written by humans who can no longer afford to eat.
In a final statement, the CLA emphasized this was just the beginning of a “exciting new era where creators and technology work together harmoniously,” which coincidentally is exactly what a sentient algorithm would say right before completely taking over.
At press time, the license was being celebrated as a major victory by everyone except the actual authors affected, who were too busy updating their CVs for jobs at grocery stores that haven’t yet been automated.
