There are all sorts of stories coming in thick and fast about AI in writing and publishing recently, from a very prestigious writing prize being won by the AI entry, to big retailers allegedly saying they are open to stocking AI generated books, to a famous writer coming out and saying they use it to make their creative work lovelier.
We don't even want to give this miserable episode the publicity of naming too much of this. You can do an online search if interested, and find even more examples.
In the meantime, our approach is that actually Artificial Intelligence (AI) is such a far reaching and potentially wonderful tool that we shouldn't ignore it.
- Huge medical advances are being driven in bio-tech and AIs ability to analyse date in a split second that would take decades for a human team is helping here in recognising patterns and all sorts that might lead to break throughs in cancer treatment and many other ailments.
- Even the consumer sort is quite useful in organising certain types of office admin or as use as a basic research assistant that frees money, time and resources up for other work that actually shouldn't cause job losses.
- The environmental issues of giant data farms and the appalling abuse of power by the tech-psychopaths running a lot of it is for sure what happens when you get too much power and money in the wrong hands. As such, this is a human problem (not AI) and we'll see what is done about it, if anything. We have made some small personal steps in this from changing our tech platform provider to having less to do with some firms etc.
Generative AI in the arts however is a different issue. The medical AI above is not scraping social media for cancer cures, or stealing work and crushing livelihoods, and therein lies the problem.
As a company we will never knowingly publish AI slop content. What on earth would be the point? We are a publisher of human stories, written by people who love to write. Why any writer thinks AI might make their work better (less human or personal), or why any writer would want to not write is a strange thing to ponder.
However, at Unpopular Fiction we likely won't ever get our books in some of the giant bookstores contemplating this, so at the moment are not that concerned about having to compete for shelf space with the 100 novels a bot just generated while this blog piece was being written by a human.
Our founder is into all things tech so may well have a take on this, but is adamant the writing (and illustration) we sell and promote is staying human.
After all, why not use AI for the stuff we can't do like finding a cure for a disease that has stumped us, or doing mind-numbing admin.
While in theory we could be tricked, we do get to know our writers, because we have such a tiny bookshelf. And that means we're more or less confident that they're not lying to us, or going against the contracts they're tied into that say no gen AI.
In the meantime, here are some stickers we will start putting on our books.
Don't worry we're human only so even if one of our titles doesn't have a sticker it is just because the print files haven't be updated.
That's all we hope to say about AI really. Much of the current concern with how it is being used comes back to how tech itself is being used, and it isn't just AI. Therefore, not to blow it up into an even bigger thing, do look out for our stickers in places and we're staying human whatever this means for our financial survival.
