A children’s book that seems completely harmless, even a little cheesy, but is sold at a high price in all online bookstores. However, there is no trace of a biography of its author. Was it written by a real woman? Or entirely by artificial intelligence (AI)? During the 25thare At the conference on the digital book, which was held on Thursday, November 28 at the National Library of France, Arnaud Robert, general secretary of Hachette Livre and president of the legal commission of the National Publishing Union (SNE), clearly leaned towards the second hypothesis, presenting the cover of this book on a 4 by 3 meter screen although nothing indicates it on the cover. Robert highlighted the avalanche of books written by AI, “to the point that “real” works risk disappearing in a magma of works that are not written by humans”.
Especially since the latter are systematically supported by hundreds of laudatory comments, also prepared by AI. Although Amazon imposed, in December 2023, that the same “person” cannot publish more than three books per day on its Kindle Direct Publishing self-publishing platform, the production flow continues to increase. Faced with this threat, the SNE has decided to take the matter to the legal level and has just appointed a lawyer who will analyze the legality of this type of books.
AI is already investing in many fields of publishing. According to Virginie Clayssen, director of heritage and digitalization at Editis and president of the SNE digital commission, “All editors have been working with AI for two years, most of the time in testing phases”.
The American company Veristage has created Insight, an AI platform aimed at them. Launched by two publishing bigwigs, Thomas Minkus and Thomas Cox, it allows, according to the latter, to analyze documents and “streamline the entire editorial life cycle”. Insight includes tools to extract data from a manuscript (character summaries, plot, locations, etc.), translate books into five languages, and produce audiobooks at high speed. The platform also suggests texts for back covers, marketing campaigns for social networks, captions and images… And it can also analyze the sales of a book. Therefore, entire sections of the edition are affected. “I hear a lot of people are worried about jobs. “I don’t know a single editor who isn’t overworked.”says Mr. Cox, who wants to reassure, without convincing.
You have 53.69% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.
