Chile Debates AI and Writing

A Chilean public university is using World Book Day to ask a new literary question: what counts as authorship when artificial intelligence helps write. (vinculacion.utem.cl) Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, or UTEM, announced on April 20 that its publishing house, Ediciones UTEM, would mark the 2026 observance with public activities centered on “artificial intelligence and writing.” The program tied reading promotion to a live debate on contemporary writing practices. (vinculacion.utem.cl) Ediciones UTEM also said it will open two calls on April 23: one for academics and staff to submit unpublished books or essays, and another for undergraduate and graduate students to submit essays, short stories, and micro-stories about artificial intelligence. The student call says entrants should show “a voice of their own.” (editorial.utem.cl) The timing is deliberate. UNESCO marks World Book and Copyright Day every year on April 23, linking the celebration of books to copyright, the legal system that assigns credit and control over creative work. (unesco.org) That link has become harder to separate from artificial intelligence. Generative artificial intelligence systems produce text by learning patterns from large datasets, and Chile’s debate now spans both the use of books in training data and the status of text produced with machine assistance. (intellectual-property-helpdesk.ec.europa.eu) Chile’s government entered that argument in May 2024, when it introduced a bill to regulate artificial intelligence systems after updating its national artificial intelligence policy. UNESCO said the proposal sought to regulate and encourage the “ethical and responsible” development of the technology. (unesco.org) A 2024 analysis by the Latin America Intellectual Property SME Helpdesk said the Chile bill would add a copyright exception for data mining of large datasets when there is no direct commercial exploitation of the protected material. The same analysis said that approach could ease artificial intelligence development while creating friction with rightsholders who want compensation and control. (intellectual-property-helpdesk.ec.europa.eu) Chile’s existing copyright law, Law No. 17.336, protects authors’ economic and moral rights in literary, artistic, and scientific works from the moment of creation. Those moral rights include paternity and integrity of the work, which puts attribution at the center of any argument over machine-generated text. (digital.gob.cl) Other copyright authorities have moved in a similar direction on human control. In a January 29, 2025 report, the U.S. Copyright Office said outputs from generative artificial intelligence can be protected only when a human author determines enough of the expressive elements. (copyright.gov) Chile’s book sector has already been building the infrastructure for those questions. In November 2025, the University of Chile and the Ministry of Cultures launched a platform meant to combine data from legal deposit, the intellectual property registry, ISBN Chile, public libraries, publishers, and distributors into a national book database. (elciudadano.com) At UTEM, the immediate test is smaller and more concrete: a university press is asking students to write about artificial intelligence while a public debate asks who, exactly, gets called the author. (editorial.utem.cl)