Since Parmy Olson has won the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Prize SupremacyRegarding the battle of technological companies for controlling artificial intelligence, it began to use language models more frequently in its own research. “(They) can be a useful tool for bouncing ideas, (explore) angles and obtaining historical references to make comparisons,” she says.
Like the 2025 edition of the price launchingThe debate on the question of whether a generative AI is a threat or an opportunity for the authors consumes the industry.
“We are very aware that these technologies can be used in a way that will dilute the automated man's market on man,” explains Umair Kazi, director of defenders and policies of the author Guild, the American professional organization of writers. “But at the same time, these are extremely useful tools.”
Like youCurrent prose could put some writers out of a job. Evidence also increases that some LLMs have been trained by developers – without the consent of the authors – on the hacked versions of books protected by copyright.
The concerns about illegal scratch have united authors against practice. Mary Rassenberger, a former copyright and media lawyer who is now director general of author Guild, said: “We have never had this level of agreement between our members on a question”.
The AI challenge has also brought together publishers and agents. Esmond Harmsworth, president of the literary agency Aevitas, says: “Since the author and the publisher could easily be replaced (by AI), this was a more pleasant negotiation and in which we join to try to find solutions to this.” The agents now insist on clauses in book contracts to control the future LLM training on the work of the authors or, in some cases, to dismiss its use for costs.
But AI is also an opportunity. The same engines offer automated assistance to the authors in brainstorming and the search for ideas, or the modification and revision of what they wrote.
Olson says that she “cannot always see any model to generate text that could replace my own writing”. She says that the prose of the AI generation is “bland” and that “it will always be destructive of the soul not to write in your own voice”.
Use of LLMS for research, as Olson does, is done well in guidelines For responsible and effective use of AI, produced for authors last month by Wiley, which publishes academic works, manuals and general commercial books.
Josh Jarrett, Wiley's main vice-president for AI growth, says that the hypothesis was that writers “would use these tools anyway and that we have to find the right place on this continuum”, which could start with widespread tools such as books entirely.
The directives, assembled after examining 5,000 authors and researchers, indicates that technology must be used “as a companion for (the) writing process, not a replacement”. It presents when the authors must disclose the use of AI – for example, when the tool “has modified (their) reflection on arguments or key conclusions”. Wiley allows you to use AI to prepare “educational content”, such as case studies and practice issues, with monitoring and disclosure. His guide is a “living document”, explains Jarrett, which will evolve as technology is developing.
There are signs that AI works deeper in the writing process, in particular the announcement of the co-founder of Openai, Sam Altman, on the social media platform X last month that a model not yet unpublished was “Good to creative writing».
Serious publishers and agents follow a hard line against the use of AI to write whole books – but some experience. Wiley tried to produce his manual AI Generative for mannequins using technology. Jarrett says that even if it was useful for writing chapter titles, this “did not really save a lot of time”. Wiley says that generative IA could be used to develop new formats, such as a concise edition of a heavy goods vehicle manual.
Executive coach Marshall Goldsmith has a You have an avatar This answers questions based on his previous work, including his bestseller What got you here won't take you. When asked if the technology was useful for coaching, Marshallgoldsmith.a replied that the best result combines both human and machine: “It is a proposal both / and no longer / or.”
James Levine, director of the Levine Greenberg Rostan agency, said the biggest emerging threat is in the word pronounced, rather than in writing, because “several publishers now experience the use of AI to record audio books”. On the other hand, Harmsworth stresses that the rapid recording of documents which could otherwise never be made available in audio form could be a boon for visually impaired readers.
Kevin Anderson, director general of the Kevin Anderson & Associates book writing service, believes that the AI will hit the writers of ghosts at the lower beach in the middle of the sector. They are generally paid $ 25,000 to $ 50,000 for 18 months of work on a book that will increase a business manager or the profile of celebrity. Anderson stresses that AI could set up an adequate book which is “generic, complete, well written and well organized” in a weekend.
In the upper end of the profession, where his agency recently sealed a ghost writing contract worth $ 500,000, Anderson says it is more difficult for machines to replace humans. “Generating content is not necessarily the part that humans do better than AI. This is to determine what the content should be and to be this interviewer, using their human intuition to … Find out how to get out (the story) of the person in the right way, ”he says.
Even if some authors do not yet use AI, their agents and their publishers do it almost certainly. Springer Nature this month presented A tool to fight against the false research generated by AI and identify the non -relevant references in its bids of books and journals. Levine uses “characters” specialized in AI to help criticize the proposals for incoming books on technical subjects, although it only does it with the permission of the authors and using models that are not formed on the entry.
Technology is progressing quickly. “We already see a sharp drop in some of the parallel jobs that the authors have made to complete the income of books – including writing copies, commercial writing and a certain journalism; And now they see books generated by IA-competition with theirs and in some cases using their text or their identity, ”warns Rasenberger.
Harmsworth believes that the models have not yet caught up with talented writers. But “the big question that has all worried us is the duration of the duration”.
To find out more about the FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year 2025 Prize, visit www.ft.com/bookaWard and https://businessbook.live.ft.com/
