Yet Another Take on AI and Publishing

Don’t hit the panic button quite yet

Photo by Lil Mayer on Unsplash

This essay originally appeared in “The Bigger Picture” on Medium under a different title. As the year ends, I’m striving to keep an open mind about how the world works as a way to open more “doors of perception,” as William Blake said. That includes the dreaded juggernaut known, paradoxically, as artificial intelligence.

And so it goes. A company called Spines, which has raised at least $16 million in venture funding, will use AI to fast-track the process of proofreading, designing a cover, and optimizing metadata for books that it will get out the door in three weeks or so — for $5,000 or less (possibly much less).

Microsoft’s new 8080 Books imprint also will rely on AI to “hasten the diffusion of knowledge” by publishing “original research, ideas, and insights at the intersection of science, technology, and business.” They’re inviting nontraditional authors (read: non-writers) into the fold.

These are far from the only players to emerge in this lightning-fast evolution of the publishing industry.

You might view these developments as clear evidence that AI is the fox that has been welcomed into the henhouse, where it will devour all the little chicks and then go searching for more.

You might decry the further commodification of books as just another consumer good to be produced fast, at low cost, for targeted audiences looking to buy and then discard the next new thing.

In any case, AI’s encroachment on the authoring process is beginning to feel inevitable. What’s to prevent Spines from moving right along from “proofing” human-authored text to generating its own? In which case, the publisher becomes the author.

But I’m beginning to see all this in a different light.

Three things leap out at me:

• First, the human author’s ability to write whatever the hell they want is not impeded by any of this technology. Writers are always in competition with other writers — whether they’re artificial or not. So in that sense, nothing’s changed.

• Second, AI will expand the existing category of self-publishing, which has already gone a long way to democratize authorship. And self-publishing will get cheaper (take a look at Spines’ price list). So more authors can publish what they want, when they want.

• Third, the true beneficiary of AI-assisted publishing is the reader. Readers will have even more books to choose from — some of them terrible, some serviceable, some possibly great. Marketing wizardry aside, readers seek out what they like and what they need. That will still be the case, and maybe books will even get cheaper in the process, which benefits households that can’t afford books now.

Now, that small, still voice inside you may be saying, Oh, my God! So many more bad books! So many unskilled authors flooding the market! If ANYONE can publish, what’s to become of literature?!

And I say, literature isn’t going anywhere. Great books will always be written. I truly believe that. And you can still write the great book you dream about.

For added perspective, let’s hop in the way-back machine.

Imagine you are Dante, Machiavelli, or Voltaire. You’re a deep thinker with something to say, whether in poetry or prose. You want to see your ideas in print — but the only realistic way to accomplish that is to secure a wealthy patron who will not only underwrite the cost of your compositions, but also potentially offer political cover if your ideas are controversial.

You need, in other words, a wealthy Elizabethan noble or, say, a Medici (that’s Cosimo, pictured above).

For centuries, authors depended on the kindness of strangers, as it were, to get them into print. The Gutenberg printing press of the 15th century, with its wonders of movable type, may indeed have made the printing process somewhat easier and cheaper, since monks no longer had to hand-letter each manuscript, but it didn’t do a whole lot for authors yearning to publish.

For a very long time, the decisions about what to publish, and whom to publish, were firmly in the hands of the politically powerful nobility.

So, which do you prefer?

The ends and means of publishing concentrated in the hands of power-wielding, self-important people who won’t give you the time of day or otherwise exact a high price to participate?

Oh, wait…That describes publishing today, doesn’t it? Where agents and publishing houses are deaf to all but a tiny fraction of scribblers? And where even supposedly equal-opportunity hybrid publishers want upwards of $10,000 or more to make your book a reality?

Or do you prefer a world where technology empowers more people to express themselves in writing — even if it’s not good writing?

And who’s to say what good writing is, exactly? Who is going to arbitrate that? You? Welcome to the Medici family. You’ll fit right in.

Here’s where I come down on all this, for now.

Every human has an innate right to explore and express their creativity, including through the making of a book-length work. Whether the end result constitutes ‘art’ is not for me to say. But that’s also beside the point.

I’m inching toward accepting that AI can help more aspiring authors to become published authors — which is good news for writers with limited resources — while affording readers an increasingly diverse array of printed and digital material. It’s not my problem, or my fault, if readers gravitate toward material that is poorly executed; if they like it, I’m happy for them. Because otherwise…we’re talking censorship, and the publishing industry does enough of that already by denying so many authors the opportunity to be published.

But I also toe the line in a few places:

• Personally, I’ll never use AI to compose and I won’t knowingly read books written in whole or in part by an AI application.

• Nor do I condone the theft of intellectual property (the uncompensated work of others) in the making of AI text (books, articles, anthologies, etc.) that are then sold for profit.

• And I’m concerned about the way AI is likely to impinge on the genuine expertise of editors, artists, and others in allied trades.

At the end of the day, AI’s invasion of publishing isn’t all bad or all good. I’ll continue to watch fresh developments. And I reserve the right — as a human being running on an unpredictable algorithm — to amend my opinions.

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Did you know?

WRANGLING THE DOUBT MONSTER: FIGHTING FEARS, FINDING INSPIRATION

…is not only available to buy now…but it was written without involving any AI tools whatsoever! Imagine that!