It has been over two months since I last participated in Let’s Talk Bookish, whoops! However, I either didn’t have the time or brain capacity to write something at that moment, and most topics just didn’t speak to me. Thiw week we will be discussing something very topical, AI and books. AI is rapidly taking over society and it unfortunately also finds its way creeping into the book world or in arts in general.

Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme that was originally created and hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books starting in August 2019, and was then cohosted by Dani @ Literary Lion from May 2020 to March 2022. Since April 2022, the meme moved to another host, Aria @ Book Nook Bits. Let’s Talk Bookish is a meme where participants discuss certain topics, share their opinions, and share their love by visiting each other’s posts.

Prompts:< From books being used to train AI systems without author knowledge to AI-generated books on Amazon, the book world has been full of AI-related news. Have you heard about these situations? What do think about the use of AI when it comes to creative writing and books?

To answer this prompt, we first have to break down the definition of AI. What is AI? AI stands for Artificial Intellingence and is part of our society for a longer while than you think. What about unlocking your smartphone with FaceID? What about using Alexa or Google Assistant? And how do you think streaming services as Spotify or Netflix recommend you what to listen to or what to watch? Yes, all AI. So, we are using it longer than we probably are aware of. However, AI has been exponentially growing in the past two years or so. It’s used for more day-to-day tasks and even companies started to use it. It promises us to get answers faster and more acurate, even medical diagnoses. However, it’s also slwoly taking over the creative world and that’s worrying.

I haven’t really heard of the situations as described in the promt, but I have heard about AI generatedbook covers and also of AI generated blog posts. I caught a few in my spam folder on the comment section here actually. However, AI programms are getting more clever each day and therefore it’s so hard to separate something AI-generated from the real thing. Especially for visually impaired people like me, it’s impossible. Especially when it comes to the visual arts. With written content it’s easier, but the algorithms are trained on a daily basis, so they become more clever every single time. I’m not surprised if we’re unable to tell AI-generated content apart from manually created content anymore within a very short while. In my opinion, The way AI is used now is definitely not okay, it’s going way too far. Yes, apps as “Seeing AI” are really helpful for me when I can’t find an expiery date or how to use a product. And yes, I also use Google Assistant, Face ID and the shuffle function n Spotify. Therefore, AI is useful. Apart from that, it just isn’t and it’s literally killing people’s jobs. Especially in the art industry.

Lately, a well-known supermarket chain has fired their voice actors for their commercials and replaced them by AI in order to cut budgets. At least, they did so in the Netherlands. I’m not sure about other countries. If they do this, who’s next? What will happen to audiobook narrators for instance? I have no idea. Furthermore, artists within the music industry have it rough as well because of the apps that let you create AI-generated music. Did you know you re allowed to even upload that stuff on platforms as YouTube and Spotify? It’s wrong. Why? The artists never agreed on their work being used to train, let alone create with, AI. Furthermore, they don’t benefit from it as they don’t earn a single penny. Same goes for authors, whose words are being used for the same purposes. In my opinion, governments should hurry up with legislation that prohibit companies tu use AI for such purposes. Again, I’m not against useful AI, but this is outright wrong and just unuseful. Personally, I won’t use AI on my blog posts, I even hate the AI Assistant option WordPress/Jetpack has integrated. It has been turnt off. AI will be the death for creative writing and art in general if government doesn’t step in.

What do you think about AI? Do you use it? Will it be the death of creativity?