As foreshadowed on Tuesday, I end the week with a round-up that includes news from Frankfurt, where last week’s other major conference took place. One of the things that particularly caught my eye there was the release of a survey by BISG (Book Industry Study Group) on the use of AI in the publishing industry.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
It struck me as interesting because we see so many surveys about our use of AI as writers—but very few that examine how it’s being used in the wider community that serves creators.
How Publishing Uses AI
Here are the noteworthy findings. Forty-six percent of respondents in a survey of 559 participants—about half from publishing houses, with the rest from libraries and other industry-adjacent organizations—said they use AI in their work. That’s roughly in line with surveys of writers.
And like writers, most of that use is in back-office tasks such as data analysis, metadata, administration, and marketing. It’s fascinating to see that industry professionals share many of the same concerns we do, with anxiety ranging from copyright infringement to a market saturated with low-quality content.
What makes this particularly relevant is that, as indies, we’re not just writers—we also do what publishers do (even if we outsource some of it, as many of them do). It’s easy, when thinking about our own use of AI, to look only at writers’ surveys and assume those comparisons are most relevant. But we’re part of this broader publishing ecosystem, too.
EU AI Act Raises Concerns
On the subject of AI and Frankfurt, Publishing Perspectives’ Porter Anderson published an illuminating interview with one of the major speakers at the fair, Jessica Sänger of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association.
She spoke candidly about the European Union’s AI Act, which came into force earlier this year. Initially celebrated as a landmark move by creative industries to hold tech companies accountable, the Act has since sparked significant concern over how it’s being implemented—prompting yet another addition to that industry-favorite genre: the open letter.
In particular, the Code of Practice meant to regulate what tech companies can do and to help rights holders enforce their rights is seen as weak. Sänger also points out that it allows companies signing on to the agreement a one-year grace period without scrutiny.
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