Last week saw a highly controversial statement from Kim Tae-Heon, president of the Korean Publishers Association. In the statement, Kim refers to the emergence of AI as “reader.” This has, of course, caused considerable rumblings among those who feel he has not done adequate justice to the rapacious nature of the technology and the companies who control it.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
As always, Mark Williams has a considered take that runs counter to the alarms being sounded. He points first to what is actually being said: that AI consumes words, just like human readers do. But second, to the implication of that for the publishing industry, which in effect has a new audience to consider. And to sell to, through licensing. He is seeking to build a very formalized structure for such deals, which he believes will benefit rights holders, readers, and tech firms.
This may still sound utterly beyond the pale, but it is important to note that our industry takes different approaches to emerging technologies in different parts of the world.
Barnes and Noble's AI Policy
And on the subject of controversial statements on the subject of AI, possibly the world's most influential bookseller has waded in with comments. James Daunt has been outlining the policy toward AI-generated books that Barnes and Noble adopts.
Daunt caused a stir when he seemed to suggest that the US bookselling giant (and possibly with implications for Waterstones in the UK) only had an objection to AI books that made out they weren't AI-written. In other words, what seemed to matter was accurate labeling.
So far so explosive. Daunt rushed to clarify that, but in doing so doesn't seem to have offered quite the reassurance he might have intended. He was adamant that Barnes and Noble does not stock AI-generated books, saying to Publishers Weekly, “we take active measures to exclude all AI generated books from our online catalogue and never knowingly order any for stocking in our stores; we demand that publishers label any books that are AI generated.”
He went on, however, to say that if there was clear demand for such books, he would not have a problem in stocking them.
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