Artificial intelligence (AI) has been present in our lives for the past few years now. You can find it on social media, writing tools, and even in search engines. Its ever-looming presence begs the question: are we going to lose our jobs to AI? 

Publishing is one of many fields that combines creativity and art with marketing and sales in order to create profitable products. The industry is already notoriously difficult to break into, even without the threat of AI competition. Our instinct as creatives may be to push away any idea of using AI, to manifest its complete destruction and disappearance from our lives. Unfortunately, now that this technology is here, it is unlikely to go away. More realistically, AI will continue to be developed and used by millions of people. With this in mind, I believe it is crucial we learn to incorporate AI in a way where we can still maintain human creativity and boost the publishing industry as a whole.

So, how would AI be used in publishing? There are currently many AI platforms that claim the ability to write a whole novel, edit a manuscript, or generate a digital ad for you. Many corporate leaders and budget-cutters might think this is a great idea, that it will cut down on costs for publishing. But the quality of such work from AI is questionable; AI can only create based on what information it has been fed previously, and there are constant errors. There is no real creativity or uniqueness to its content, and eventually, this is what will keep creative work in the hands of passionate people who can imagine a lot more than what has already been done. There has even been public backlash against the use of AI in a creative manner. The Disney+ series Secret Invasions by Marvel used AI to generate its title sequence, resulting in much criticism and backlash from watchers, many of whom claimed a real artist could have created something much more original.

This kind of reaction helps dissuade my fears of AI taking over all creative jobs in the industry. But this still doesn’t mean AI has nothing to offer us in publishing. AI systems are able to process mass amounts of data and analyze it. Feeding it information about sales and previous marketing strategies could help predict future trends in the industry. It can be used to help determine optimal marketing strategies for upcoming projects and help analyze engagement on social media. We could also utilize AI to help provide dynamic pricing for books. There is a much more realistic use for AI in the departments of sales and marketing than design, editorial, or acquisitions. We still need human creativity and vision to decide what readers will like.

To answer my question at the beginning of this post (are we going to lose our jobs to AI?), no. But it will change the way we perform those jobs. Rather than completely reject the idea of AI, it will be more beneficial in the long run to learn to use it so we can guide the path it takes in the publishing industry.

Written by Elizabeth Sommer.