Kennedy, Krista. “Textual Machinery:  Authorial Agency and Bot-Written Texts in Wikipedia.” The Responsibilities of Rhetoric. Ed. Michelle Smith and Barbara Warnick. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 2010. 303-309.

Executive Summary:

Kennedy discusses the notion of authorship and authorial agency in the context of theoretical and legalistic arguments about authorship in bot-driven encyclopedic texts (Wikipedia).  Theoretically speaking, if one applies both pragmatic and theoretical senses of agency (the agency possesses the agent vs. the agent possesses agency as an instrument/substance – 306), bot-written texts do have authors.  Legally however, this isn’t the case.  In the case of Aalmuhammed v. Lee, “the court ruled that the status of ‘coauthor’ required not only a mutual initial intention to enter into joint authorship but also that both parties have superintendence, or decision-making authority” (307).  In this sense, since a bot cannot enter into a relationship of mutual superintendence – because it lacks decisional agency – it cannot legally be considered an author.  Yet, we prosecute people who make viruses. . . . hmmmmmm. . .

Key Influences:

Geisler, Cheryl.  “How Ought We To Understand the Concept of Rhetorical Agency?”  Report from the ARS.”  Rhetoric Society Quarterly 34.3 (2004): 9-17.

Miller, Carolyn R.  “Expertise and Agency:  Transformations of Ethos in Human Computer Interaction.”  The Ethos of Rhetoric.  Ed. Michael Hyde.  Columbia:  U of South Carolina P, 2004.  197-218

Wu, Andrew J.  “From Video Games to AI:  Assigning Copyright Ownership to Works Generated by Increasingly Sophisticated Computer Programs.”  AIPLA Quarterly Journal 131 (1997):  133-178.