TAA AI Committee Announces Association's Position Statement on Artificial Intelligence

The TAA AI Committee has been working diligently on its three-prong goals of advocacy, education and support to TAA members around the issues that AI, and in particular GenAI and LLMs (Learning Language Models), present in the academic and textbook publishing areas. To that end, it has developed a position statement to reflect the views of TAA regarding the challenges and risks of GenAI to creators, educators and learners. TAA members were invited to provide feedback on the statement during a 30-day comment period that commenced on March 15, 2026. 

The AI Committee carefully reviewed and considered the input of our members to this statement addressing one of the most pressing issues facing our members now and in the future. This final position statement will help shape and direct future actions and activities of the AI Committee and TAA generally. Learn more about the AI Committee’s work.

TAA's position on Generative Artificial Intelligence is thanks to the diligent work of TAA's AI Committee Members:

Brenda Ulrich, Chair | Bertha Amisi | Gerald Friedland | John Hodges | Vernetta K. Mosley, PhD | Jocelyn Nelson | Barbara Price | Margaret Reece | Joe Rust | Linda Tucker

TAA Position on Generative Artificial Intelligence

Preamble

Generative Artificial Intelligence (“GenAI”) is a revolutionary technology with the potential to fundamentally alter human education, learning and creativity as we know it. The future impact of GenAI is uncertain and potentially massive. While GenAI presents significant challenges to creators, educators, and publishers, it also presents meaningful opportunities to enhance teaching, improve accessibility, accelerate research processes, and support student learning when implemented thoughtfully, transparently, and ethically.

The question is not whether GenAI will shape higher education, but how it will be shaped—and by whom.

Some things we do know:

  • False equivalencies between humans and computers can lead to faulty reasoning in the GenAI space. GenAI systems are not people.
  • Humans learn and create in ways that are not the same as what GenAI systems are doing when they “learn” or “create.”
  • GenAI poses a unique threat to human-created works, and the incentives to create them, that copyright law is meant to foster.
  • GenAI is impacting textbook and academic publishing and has consequences that authors and publishers need to consider now. 
GenAI tools are already being incorporated into research workflows, writing processes, instructional materials, and courseware platforms.These developments require thoughtful engagement by authors and educators to ensure that such tools serve human learning and intellectual growth rather than undermine them. They are powerful tools that require human intention, judgment, and accountability.


I.The Implications of GenAI on Creation and Education 

Textbook and academic authors have strong concerns and reservations about GenAl. As authors,TAA members have watched as GenAI companies obtain and use authors’ creative content to train Large Language Models (LLMs) without their creators’ knowledge or consent, much less compensation. As educators, TAA members have seen the corrosive effects of improper GenAI use on student learning and ethical scholarship. Because TAA members are both authors and educators, they are both creators and consumers of copyrighted content, and therefore in a unique position not only to identify risks, but also to help define responsible uses of GenAI that strengthen critical thinking, preserve academic integrity, and augment rather than replace human instruction.

II. The Limitations of GenAI and LLMs

LLMs cannot respond to experience, data and emotion as human beings can—LLMs only summarize, predict or draw from content previously created by human beings. In other words, LLMs can predict, but they cannot intuit—GenAI cannot have an “Aha!” moment that leads to the creation of something genuinely new and groundbreaking. History shows that human progress occurs when human curiosity, courage, observation and serendipity combine in new ways that lead to breakthroughs in knowledge or creativity, such as Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech; Darwin and Wallace conceiving the theory of natural selection, Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s landmark opinions on gender equality, Beethoven composing his Symphony No. 9. All of these accomplishments required human critical thinking and intuitive creativity with every step. 

From a policy perspective, we should carefully consider what we lose when we fail to protect human creators, or discourage or disincentivize the impulse to create or discover. It is essential to recognize and support the role of human creators so that the treasury of human knowledge continues to grow.

At the same time, policy discussions must also consider how GenAI, when governed responsibly, may serve as an assistive technology that augments human effort, expands access to learning, and supports innovation in pedagogy, while preserving the central role of human creativity and intellectual labor.

III. GenAI and the Textbook and Academic Book Industries

GenAI has the potential to have enormous, disruptive and irreversible effects on the textbook and academic book industries. Authors and publishers must work together to consider the implications of these changes to their industry and on the instructors and students they serve. Together, authors and publishers, in consultation with students and instructors, can best determine how and where GenAI is integrated into the educational landscape for the long term. This integration should be guided by principles of transparency, consent, instructor configurability, human oversight, and a commitment to strengthening student learning outcomes.The potential implications and effects of GenAI are large, long-reaching and uncertain; to focus solely on short-term gains is unwise. Sustainable integration requires long-term thinking about intellectual property, contractual clarity, equitable compensation, academic integrity, and the preservation of diverse scholarly voices.

IV. What we want:

  1. For the benefit of humanity, diverse viewpoints must survive and the value of and need for human creators must be kept at the forefront of GenAI policy discussions.
  2. TAA to play an active role in shaping policies regarding GenAI and future technological developments that affect textbook and academic authors and publishers.
  3. TAA to serve as a convener of authors, publishers, educators, technologists, and policymakers in developing ethical and sustainable approaches to GenAI in higher education.
  4. Textbook authors and educators to have meaningful input into how GenAI and future technological developments are integrated into our educational system and educational tools to best support instructors while effectively building student skills and knowledge.
  5. AI-enabled educational tools to preserve instructor control, promote student critical thinking, and maintain clear disclosure of AI involvement in content creation and assessment.
  6. Authors and publishers to be partners in navigating the impact and opportunities of GenAI on their industry, including in determining how publishing contracts will address GenAI and other technological developments.
  7. Contractual transparency regarding the use of GenAI in content development, revision, marketing, and distribution.
  8. Transparency and author input on publisher licensing or other deals with GenAI companies, with authors having the right to opt their works out of being used to train GenAI at any point in time.
  9. Transparency from GenAI developers regarding training data sources and for mechanisms that allow authors to provide informed consent regarding the use of their works.
  10. Ongoing review of this position as GenAI technologies evolve and as their educational, economic, and creative impacts become clearer over time.