Stolen words and fake books
AI in Action
Patricia McAlernon
How do you know if a book you are reading has been written by an author or generated using AI? By law the publisher should inform the reader if the book content has been compiled with AI, but this is not always the case.
Technology companies have secretly ‘scraped’ the Internet for book content without consent from the creators and generated fake versions. AI models have been built using stolen material from well known novels or books without permission. AI-generated books are becoming more widely available which is making it even more difficult for writers to make a living. In turn this makes it more difficult for publishers to invest in authors who can sometimes take 10 or more years to complete a book compared to less than an hour for AI. AI models are continuously being built using all the information it can find on the Internet. They cannot determine if the data is good, bad, real or fake.
The term ‘scraping’ perhaps is very appropriate for this scavenging process which inevitably results in feeding AI models with rubbish data. Large AI models are actively ingesting the content of all books, science, personal data and our cultural knowledge. These models can then be used by large technology companies to manipulate how we behave and what books we buy in the future.
Small publishers in Ireland provide an invaluable service to Irish literature and our cultural heritage. A bookshop which is known to promote the work of local authors will provide a source of authentic books containing the creator’s original content. We can be certain the books we purchase are not created with AI from text content ‘scraped’ from the Internet. The emergence of ebooks has already changed the way we read. Online digital literature is exposed to ‘scraping’ and cannot be fully protected from AI.
There is a real need for writers to publish their books using local publishers and not be tempted to use large technology based companies. Towns in Ireland should encourage the existence of bookshops which sell books by local authors. Fake books can be filtered out of our choice by opting to support local authors. The success of local authors will help encourage others to step forward to publish their own books.
We all know someone who is always talking about writing a book or has a life story to tell. We all have memories which are unique and worthwhile sharing so people can gain inspiration and perhaps help to negotiate a difficult stage in their own life. Personal memoirs remain safe in a world swamped with AI. The best person to write your memoirs is yourself, not AI technology. AI is artificial and as such is not living like a person’s memories. Unlike AI-generated text, writers can use words and phrases to create feelings which the reader can appreciate. The reader can relate more instinctively to the memoirs if the author is familiar or known to them. If memoirs are created by an AI model they do not have the same personal impact as a human author.
What makes a successful book based on memoirs? It certainly has not been written by AI technology because we can tell the difference between expressions and phrases made by a human and a computer algorithm. The author may be familiar or personally known to the reader which is not possible if the creator is AI. The location, places and people referred to by the author are spoken about with human sentiment which is impossible for AI since technology does not have the capability of feeling.
So, when you are selecting your next book of memoirs or a novel, first check if it is genuine and has a human behind real words and not AI-technology behind stolen words.