Publishing is always changing in big and small ways. There used to be a Big Six, then there was a Big Five in publishing. Now there’s a Big Four. Hot genres cool. Cold genres heat up and occasionally new genres are created. Amazon sales pages have changed for books, and in my opinion not for the better. You’ve no doubt heard that a big revolution is afoot. Artificial Intelligence is about to replace a lot of people. Maybe even you.
There’s a divide in the writing community right now over the emergence of recently improved artificial intelligence. ChatGPT, Jasper, and others can upgrade your book marketing copy. AI reconfigures and composes existing art to fulfill the parameters you plug into its engine. Artificial voices are improving to the point where some authors may choose machines over voice actors for their audiobooks. At least one person (probably many more) has already created fiction using ChatGPT. Things are changing, and we’re not ready for it,
Whenever any new technology emerges, there’s a painful transition. When cell phones came out, there was a panic over the brain tumors they could theoretically produce. That didn’t happen, of course, but in that case the volume of complaints during the the introduction of was much louder than the reality. There are valid concerns around copyright and current job roles becoming outmoded. I mean, real talk, if machines write thousands and thousands of novels faster than I can, I won’t be pleased. I think I better prepare myself for not being pleased.
Obstacles loom for the quick adoption of a non-human workforce putting art together. Currently, if you use AI art for your book covers, you are not able to claim copyright on that cover. You don’t possess the license from the amalgam of images the AI draws from. The AI is compositing, not originating. All that said, the toothpaste is already squeezed out of the tube and it’s not going back in. We’re going to have to adapt in several ways.
In the classroom, for instance, kids will have to write essays in class (if that’s what you still want). Let them go home, and ChatGPT and its alternatives will be penning those essays on The Great Gatsby. A voice actor I follow on TikTok said her solution to machines reading audiobooks is to emphasize the emotional core of her work. She’s not just a reader. Acting is her job. She is confident she can out-act any machine and she’s not afraid of the competition. Also, it should be noted that dedicated audiobook readers not only look for audiobooks by certain authors. Some voice actors have a following who listen to whatever they read. That’s leverage the machines don’t have, at least not yet.
Something that is often lost in the debate is that plenty of authors do not have the budget to pay to create audiobooks with a human voice. My solution is to go the DIY route with my audiobooks. That option is not accessible to everyone. Some will reject any non-human participation in the creation of their art. For others, using a machine reader mimicking he human voice feels like a necessity.
I’ve tested ChatGPT to optimize my marketing copy. Yes, it needed a little editing afterward, but not much. Revamping my marketing copy for so many books and paying a smug consultant exorbitant fees would be prohibitively expensive.
If readers and listeners are okay with it, and production costs less, AI art creation will increase in acceptance. We can dig in our heels and resist the future, but in the long term it feels like trying to hold back the tide with a teacup. I’m not telling you to surrender and go all in on Skynet. I am suggesting that it would be wise to figure out how to up your game and adapt to a changing landscape in the meantime.
As this sticky taffy get pulled, you will see some books published with a notation that reads something like: No machine intelligence was involved in the creation of the art on the cover of this book, nor were any used in the creation of the narrative. This novel was written by a human being.
~ I am Robert Chazz Chute. Read my novels, some of which tell of machine intelligence taking everything all the way the fuck over, at AllThatChazz.com.
Filed under: publishing, artificial intelligence, audiobooks, books, ChatGPT, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, self-publishing, writing
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Presumably you can safely use AI for ad copy – it might be a good use for it, easier than research.
Yes. It helped my marketing copy.
I’ve seen some AI art and…I rather liked it. I suspect there will be a lot of readers who won’t know, or won’t care, that their genre of choice is written by a human according to a ‘formula’ or an AI according to the same formula. Let’s just hope that enough readers continue to want something ‘more’.