Author Sir Philip Pullman has called on the government to change copyright laws on "scraping", where writers' books are used to train artificial intelligence (AI) software to understand and generate human language.
Writers whose work has been scraped don't get compensation or recognition, something authors including Kate Mosse and Richard Osman have criticised, saying it could destroy growth in creative fields and amount to "theft".
Sir Philip, author of the hugely popular novels about Lyra Silvertongue, the heroine of His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogies, thinks writers should be compensated.
"They can do what they like with my work if they pay me for it," he told the BBC's culture editor Katie Razzall. "But stealing people's work... and then passing it off as something else... That's immoral but unfortunately not illegal."
Last December a consultation on the UK's legal framework for copyright around the AI sector and creative industries was launched, attracting 11,500 responses.
