Aside from the terrible moral implications, is this not blatantly against copyright law? If they're using LLMs and publish the results for profit, what is the chance that those LLMs are guaranteed to be created all off public domain content? Profiting off other people's writing with no permission?
"we are looking to see how we can take some of that pressure off and offload some of the less skilled work, as it were, onto AI. ***Populating metadata***, for example, which is vital but time consuming, could potentially be streamlined, freeing us up for more creative work."
“Disrupt”. Basically means we are going to show that we can do very little and belittle years of a person’s hard work or research and make more money than you. Hahaha. 🙄
I want AI to do my laundry, dishes and clean my house so I can spend more time doing the things I love: gardening, painting, reading (books by REAL writers), playing with my pets and hanging out with my beloveds.
Until AI can accomplish that - I am not impressed.
Asking the right question here - I'd like to see what kind of market analysis they did to come up with this plan. They gonna get AI to buy the books too?
There's no market analysis involved. If you know someone who works in VC you give them a call, tell them you are doing something with AI and they mail you a $10M check in 3-5 business days.
So basically they want people to read stories so derogative that no one bothered to write them so that they don't have to pay authors. And they're pretending to be revolutionaries doing it.
I think the books are written by actual people, they are just taking editors, proofreaders, designers out of the equation. It's a gussied up self-publish house that's trying to ride the AI wave.
Ya it's just a vanity/self-publish biz that's shoehorning in AI tools to make it seem like it's "disruptive" or innovative. Like so many bad tech bro startups, it's taking a long existing biz and packaging it w/ a veneer of trendy tech to dupe VCs chasing the next unicorn.
I don’t understand what they mean by “produce” if they don’t plan on having AI write the books. There are already books that appear to be written by AI on the market
Yep. And the idea that AI can even proofread…if you use Word to write you’ve noticed how much their proofreading function has tanked aimed they started integrating AI. (Anyone who doesn’t can just check out most of the recent photos on my account. I stopped even keeping track. It’s so ridiculous)
That's not the way I read it, but who knows w/ these AI grifters. 🤷♂️ I think authors submit fully written manuscripts. They are just trying to AI-ify the processes it usually requires to transform a manuscript to publishable book.
I guess they could mean something else by “produce” but I have 7 books out and 7 more coming in 2025 and I’ve never heard it used in, like, the sense movies are produced. Maybe I just don’t hang out with corporate speak weirdos though.
Looks like this could be an AI-generated photo of the company leadership cuz real humans and computers would both imagine them to look exactly like this.
In the end some AI may be better and there may be AI authors with their own personality - a virtual Paul Auster for example. Who knows? But like theatre and cinema before we want the contingency or risky performance, and the limitations of humanity and experience that made the likes of Bukowski.
Every single one of these human skid marks should be strangled in front of their children. (And if they don’t have any children, they shouldn’t because they should do the whole world a favor and never breed.)
As well as undercutting authors, proof-readers, publishers etc, readers can still only ever get through x number of books at any given time – a natural speed bump. And why would it encourage those who are limited by time constraints - if they don’t do so already - to read?
The 2024 equivalent to locking a group of monkeys in a room with a bunch of typewriters and hoping that they will eventually recreate the works of Shakespeare.
I’m publishing 7 books in 2025 and I’m human. Someone should write an article about that that doesn’t involve somehow computing that I used more water and electricity to write my books than AI did
Comments
"we are looking to see how we can take some of that pressure off and offload some of the less skilled work, as it were, onto AI. ***Populating metadata***, for example, which is vital but time consuming, could potentially be streamlined, freeing us up for more creative work."
🤣
man-bun guy is the breakout star, like Lance Bass
I want AI to do my laundry, dishes and clean my house so I can spend more time doing the things I love: gardening, painting, reading (books by REAL writers), playing with my pets and hanging out with my beloveds.
Until AI can accomplish that - I am not impressed.
There's no market analysis involved. If you know someone who works in VC you give them a call, tell them you are doing something with AI and they mail you a $10M check in 3-5 business days.
So they’re getting money from the authors, knowing that the books themselves won’t bring in shit
https://bsky.app/profile/phillewis.bsky.social/post/3lbs2v4gdqk2r
Maybe that’s where all these tech bros come from
A vanity press
Label it as AI
????
Profit
Also, man-bun…
NEVER.
Real publishers vet authors, fact check manuscripts, invest in pre publication development, and they pay royalties.
Eg Norton, Wiley, OUP.
I'm gonna "disrupt" the transportation industry by dropping old couches off of overpasses the freeways.
Apropos