Artificial Intelligence (AI) In Publishing With Thad McIlroy

How are publishers using AI and what are the potential use cases in the future? Why is this an exciting time in publishing for those who use the new tools to expand their creative possibilities? Thad McIlroy and I have a wonderful discussion about the current state of AI in publishing, and where we think it might be going next.

Thad McIlroy is a nonfiction author and contributing editor, writing at the intersection of AI and book publishing, as well as a publishing consultant. His latest book is The AI Revolution in Book Publishing: A Concise Guide to Navigating Artificial Intelligence for Writers and Publishers.

• Why is generative AI so controversial in publishing?
• Ways in which traditional publishers are using AI tools
• How platforms are monitoring and placing guidelines on AI work
— and why Ingram blocked his book
• The future of licensing — and synthetic data
• The increasing importance of high-quality print books
• Generative AI search and book discoverability
• Why Thad thinks this is the most exciting time in his 50 year career in publishing

[scottmorganwip]

I enjoyed the episode. Thanks. I just downloaded ElevenLabs Reader and tried listening to a Holmes story read by Sir Lawrence Olivier. It's great. I've been exploring how to incorporate ethical AI into my own author career relaunch, starting with AI analysis of my nine novels to get insights on possible revisions. So many revenue stream and derivative works options with the use of AI. Exciting times!

[DreamDetective]

Another good show. I just wanted to let you know that I decided I would buy a book to help me with my process of using the chatbot.
I looked on Amazon. I was overwhelmed with how many books there are on how to use chat for writers. Unfortunately most of the cheaper ones were unavailable many of them were on kindle which I didn't want. I want a hard copy so I can make notes in the book, what is useful. I did find one that I ordered. I've been using the technology as soon as I heard about it so I think I could write one of those books myself so I will come back and report how I found the book if it was useful for your listeners.

[tomschaumleffel]

New authors or those not well known could easily get passed up if publisher who uses AI to quickly write books to market. However I see it difficult for them to get readers to follow a series without a human author as the face. So, I can see established authors with loyal readers won't be affected as much. I also worry that artists use these AI tools too much and diminish their creativity and understanding of the art in putting a story together. People love to use the Easy Button. Mr. McIlroy was right when he said AI will just get exponentially more powerful, so I am as excited and hesitant to see what comes in just the next five years. Great show and I will be following your thoughts and use on and of AI as well as writing in general.

[RodneyMalesi]

Very insightful content. Thankyou Joanna Penn

[IndustrialBonecraft]

I have worked with people in the nonfiction publishing space, and would push back heavily on how useful AI is in those instances. There were a ridiculous number of arguments that the research team had with the director, who was bullheadedly trying to shoehorn Claude AI into whatever the hell he could, because the AI was giving them: incorrect information, false resources, false references, triggering all sorts of plagiarism alerts... the list goes on. It was a complete mess that led to a lot of pointless stress and several people quitting.

[paulhiggins]

Using Midjourney for cover Art establishes the fact that AI can now replace the Artist- what are your thoughts on the perhaps inevitable replacement of the Author as well?

The endgame here seems to be a marketplace flooded with AI generated writing marketed using AI Generated Artwork. In both cases the quality or originality of the writing and the art may not be as good as a human might make, but if even a writer such as yourself is satisfied with the creative outputs of machines I don't see why the general readership would have a problem with consuming the work of AI authors.

As both Artists and Writers we face the bizzare prospect of being replaced by derivative versions of ourselves made by machines that were trained on our own creative works- which reads like the synopsis of a dystopian novel set in the far future but seems to be happening in the here and now.