Who Really Wrote That Book?
As a small bookseller, we decided several years ago to become members of Booksellers Aotearoa NZ, the national trade association representing indie booksellers across the country. It’s an invaluable resource, keeping us up to date with industry news, book trends and providing guidance on everything from supporting self-published authors to navigating the challenges facing our industry.
One of their more recent conversations has been around artificial intelligence and, like it is for almost every industry, it’s a bit of a minefield.
Booksellers NZ strongly encourages transparency from publishers and authors. Their position is that readers, our customers, deserve to know whether artificial intelligence (AI) has been used in creating a book, and to what extent.
And we fully support this stand, but I have to admit, I use AI every day.
I use it to help write social media posts, brainstorm ideas, recommend sales goals and, yes, even proofread this article. AI has a place in today’s world and I don’t think we can ignore it. I certainly don’t let it write everything for me, but let’s be honest - it is considerably better at sentence formation than I am!
But there is a difference between using AI as a tool and handing over the creative process entirely.
When it comes to the ethical responsibility and artistic integrity of authors, writers and illustrators, it becomes a balancing act. There is enormous value in the skill, imagination and hard work that goes into writing a novel or creating an illustration. Those are human skills developed over years and can’t simply be replaced because AI is faster or cheaper.
At Petronella’s, our policy is that we won’t knowingly sell or promote books produced solely using AI. But inevitably, some will slip through the net. We won’t always know how a book was created or how much AI was involved.
So, for us, it comes back to curation.
