As well as being conference season, it is of course “that time of year” in another way familiar to all of us who follow literary events. Last week saw the Nobel committee announce its annual roster of prizes, including that for literature. So congratulations to Anne Carson, whose winning citation praises her “bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
In my own playful attempt at a segue, I might say that the distinguishing feature of all Nobel laureates is that they are, at the time of their award, inimitable. Which brings us to the subject of AI. And this week of Pangram, the most popular, certainly the most cited, AI detection software operating in the literary space.
Pangram's CEO Makes His Case
The Bookseller has an interview with Pangram's CEO, Max Spero, who is, as I noted previously, very bullish about the scarcity of “false positives” (works written by humans erroneously being flagged as AI-generated). He claims a 1-in-24,000 false positive rate for the latest Pangram model, as well as claiming that the prevalence of false positives drops rapidly as the length of text being assessed increases. He also hints at a very wide adoption of the tool within the publishing industry. Many are more skeptical and believe tools like Pangram have created a culture of suspicion. Spero meanwhile holds that without such tools the suspicion would be greater.
Ghostwriters Feel the Squeeze
The Bookseller also reports that AI may be significantly impacting the demand for ghostwriters. The magazine indicates both its own findings and those of the Society of Authors suggest ghostwriters are reporting a downturn in commissions as a result of AI. There are, though, some notable and important caveats provided. This seems to be for what it calls the lower-paid part of the market, with short descriptive nonfiction most affected. The kind of detailed and in-depth work that ghostwriters are often commissioned for, however, seems to be less affected. London Ghostwriting Company's Luke Shipman says in addition to the continued demand for such work, there is a continued recognition of its financial value.
Where there seems to be widespread consensus, though, is on the increase in requests for writers to rework the outputs generated by AI.
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