The benefits of AI for our publishing industry

There has been a flood of anxious comments regarding the fate of Thélyson Orélien, the Haitian-Canadian author disqualified from the Goncourt Prize because his novel "C’était ça ou mourir" was found to have been written, at least in part, by artificial intelligence. Some predict a future of works produced entirely by AI, perhaps capable of getting away with it and depriving writers—who base their entire careers on such ambition—of the chance to win prizes; Others, on the other hand, explain that they will not be fooled again and, for fear of defamatory accusations, will write by hand, save every single keystroke on an offline computer, hand over a USB stick – or even a printed copy – to their agent, and then wait for the publisher to entrust the typesetting to a scribe specialising in illuminated manuscripts. More modestly, this section of Il Foglio believes that AI will indeed have devastating effects but, in the long run, beneficial ones on publishing and literature – which are two quite distinct things.

It will benefit the publishing industry because it will enable publishers to make money by publishing, with little effort, a greater number of what Gian Arturo Ferrari called ‘book-like objects’ – that is, items that look just like books, can be leafed through like books, are sent to bookshops labelled as books, but are not really books; they are like that salmon in Moni Ovadia’s joke that was passed from shop to shop until a shop assistant tasted it and found it inedible, whereupon the owner admonished him: ‘It’s commercial salmon, not for eating but for buying and selling’. This will benefit literature because the massive use of AI will rid us of all those would-be writers who crave their name on the cover, a launch event in a splendid setting, a glowing review from a friend who was reviewed the month before, a TV appearance and the ‘must-read’ band: there may well be more authors writing by hand, but fewer authors writing with their feet, and they’ll do so the old-fashioned way—albeit at greater expense—because they’ll be writing for the sheer joy of it. Of course, there will still be the risk of, sooner or later, awarding a prize to some novel cobbled together with a little help from AI; but that’s a risk easily avoided by abolishing literary prizes.