How should the book industry deal with artificial intelligence

The publishing industry is the latest to feel the threat of rapid advancements in artificial intelligence, from the proliferation of low-quality AI-generated writing to potential copyright infringement.

Since the launch of the user-friendly AI chatbot ChatGPT last year, concerns about the impact of generative AI on various industries have been growing.

Juergen Boos, the director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, said participants in the book industry are "deeply concerned" about this issue. The Frankfurt Book Fair is the largest book fair in the world, and this topic received significant attention at last week's event.

They are asking, "How do we determine the author's intellectual property? Who does the new content belong to? How do we incorporate it into the value chain?"

The threat is evident - AI writing programs allow novice writers to complete a novel in a matter of days, a task that may have taken months or even years in the past.

A large number of books listed with ChatGPT as co-authors are being sold through Amazon's self-publishing unit for e-books.

However, critics argue that these works are of poor quality and pose little threat to human authors.

British writer Salman Rushdie joked at a press conference during the fair that someone recently asked an AI writing tool to produce a 300-word piece in his style.

"The result was pure garbage," said the author of "Midnight's Children," drawing laughter from the audience. "Anyone who has ever read my 300-word pieces would immediately recognize that it couldn't be my work."

He added, "So far, I'm not that worried," in a rare public appearance since he narrowly escaped a near-fatal assassination attempt in the United States last year.

Jennifer Becker, a German writer and scholar, agreed with this sentiment and said during a panel discussion that the effect of AI on writing fictional works is "not very good" at the moment.

She added, "But AI has great potential."

"However, I still haven't seen the point of completely handing over the writing process to AI, as it wouldn't produce an interesting book."

However, industry participants emphasize that they are more open to AI in certain fields.

Susanne Barwick, Deputy Legal Advisor of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, said, "It depends a bit on the genre, AI has already been explored more in the fields of science and professional books."

She added that these fields are "relatively easier compared to the realm of fiction, and I think people are still more concerned about the risks."

The relationship between AI and the publishing industry may raise a series of legal issues, with one major "gray area" being who owns the copyright to AI-generated content, said fair director Boos.

There have already been AI-related legal disputes involving top authors.

Last month, several authors including George RR Martin, John Grisham, and Jodi Picoult, who wrote "Game of Thrones," filed a collective lawsuit against OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, accusing the California-based company of using their books without permission to train its "large language model."

Translation is another challenging field, with some industry participants believing that AI cannot capture the subtle differences and skills required to translate complex literary works into other languages.

Efforts are underway to make it clear whether AI is involved in the production of books.

Amazon recently released new guidelines requiring authors who wish to sell books through its self-publishing unit to disclose in advance whether their works contain material generated using AI.

Some people have also recognized the opportunity to use AI for writing, such as in the production of formulaic romance novels.

Boos joked that this could bring "some kind of relief," as "people no longer have to deal with that kind of content, it can simply be generated on a computer."