At the Frankfurt Book Fair, a major publishing event which ended on Sunday October 22, the book sector was worried about being inundated with content generated by artificial intelligence.
An artificial intelligence that would write like Salman Rushdie? The literary star says he is skeptical. But the publishing world gathered at the Frankfurt Motor Show did not hide its concern last week at the idea of being inundated with content generated by artificial intelligence. Shaken by the technological revolution at the heart of artificial intelligence software like ChatGPT, the book sector is, like many other professional sectors, in turmoil.
“Feeling of insecurity”
The players in this industry experience “a deep feeling of insecurity“, assures Juergen Boos, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest in the world, which ended on Sunday October 22, 2023. The subject was at the heart of the debates all week.
They wonder “what happens to the intellectual property of the authors, who really owns the new content, how to integrate it into the value chains?“, he explains.
Artificial intelligence already concerns translation, is developing in scientific and legal publishing but remains marginal in literary creation.
Inconclusive AI in fiction
Because when it comes to writing novels, AI still lacks inspiration, explained British author Salman Rushdie, who experienced this after reading a short generated text.in his style” by software.
“What came out was to be thrown away“, he confided to the laughter of the audience during a press conference. “Anyone who has ever read three hundred words in my handwriting would immediately recognize that it is impossible for it to be by me“, he added, ensuring that “don’t be that worried just yet“.
The performance of AI in fiction”are not yet very good“, added Jennifer Becker, German author and academic, during a round table. “I don’t yet see the time when we will hand over the writing work to AI in a completely autonomous way“, she believes.
On the other hand, “the potential is great to use it collaboratively“, as a writing assistance, according to her.
For flimsy novels, which rely on stereotypical narrative models and are intended for mass production, AI offers opportunities, even “some relief“, jokes Fair Director Juergen Boos, for those who no longer have to deal with this kind of content. It ultimately depends on the type of publication, emphasizes Susanne Barwick, deputy legal advisor of the German Publishers Association and booksellers.”The sector of scientific and specialized books is already more advanced and has already focused more on the question“, she observes.
Who owns the copyright on AI-generated texts?
But as soon as generative artificial intelligences use billions of texts to train their algorithms and create content, legal battles loom. One of the main “gray areas“is about who owns the copyright to AI-generated content, says Juergen Boos.”This is a real mess and a very important theme. There’s also a lot of money at stake“.
On Amazon’s KDP platform, dedicated to self-publishing, books entirely generated by AI abound, specialists observe, some even being among the bestsellers. KDP now asks authors to declare on the site whether their works are generated by AI (images, texts or translations).
In September, several writers, including George RR Martin, the author of the saga Game Of Thrones or the king of thriller John Grisham, have taken legal action in the United States against the Californian start-up OpenAI, which they accuse of having used their works to create ChatGPT in violation of their copyright.
In an open letter signed by numerous writers such as Margaret Atwood and Dan Brown, the American authors’ union (Authors Guild) alerted the tech giants this summer: “millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays and poems are the food for AI systems, endless meals for which there is no bill“.