You See? Generative AI is Bad At Doing My Job
Maris Kreizman on the AI Hallucinations That Made it to the Book Review Section
This past Tuesday I received 37 pitches for upcoming books from 37 different publicists representing 37 different authors. I am always aware of how many books keep coming out and how little space there is to cover any of them. And it’s particularly difficult knowing that I have my own book coming out in July.
That same day it was revealed that newspapers like the Chicago Sun Times and the Philadelphia Enquirer had published summer reading lists composed of many books that do not actually exist as part of a larger summer package full of garbage called The Heat Index. More than half of the titles on the list were AI hallucinations (The Longest Day by Rumaan Alam is “another tense narrative about a summer solstice celebration that goes wrong”) that would have been easy for literally anyone with an internet connection to fact check. Apparently they chose to skip that step entirely. Who “they” is is a bit more difficult to assess.
More than half of the titles on the list were AI hallucinations… that would have been easy for literally anyone with an internet connection to fact check.404 Media later revealed that someone at both papers had licensed the package from King Features, a “content distribution studio” owned by Hearst. I suppose it’s a mild consolation that the writing of the package doesn’t appear to have been assigned or commissioned by any of the newspapers’ editorial staff. Some shadowy figure at the top made the deal to put a package of actual churned out slop with their papers’ names on them unbeknownst to their actual staff who – I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess – are embarrassed and frustrated.
The timing of this latest LLM debacle is telling, coming after recent layoffs at both the Chicago Sun Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer. AI is such a pressing labor issue in creative fields because so many of us know that generative AI is bad at doing our jobs. You can’t replace people with machines and expect to get facts right, let alone nuances. Now just tell that to the so-called business titans at the top who actually make the decisions about how to spend (or not spend) corporate money.
I’ve written about how there are already too many books being published while at the same time there is declining space for book coverage and arts coverage in general (I am always grateful for Lit Hub!). Most, if not all, of the books competing for this limited space are still written with care and edited with care and published with care. Getting the word out about one of these books is difficult enough without having to compete with books that don’t exist.
I’ve also written elsewhere about the (some might call it obsessive) effort I put into creating any sort of book list I’m asked to write by any publications for which I freelance. Book lists, of course, are the most clickable and therefore most popular forms of book criticism at the moment, and I take them seriously because they’re what’s on offer.
There are so many factors to consider when putting together a list. I not only want to feature the best books, but I also want diversity of topic, of tone, of author background, of publisher size, of general popularity. I use my expertise to weigh my choices and game them out to create a balanced list that reflects both my personal taste plus the voice of the outlet I’m writing for. I would wager to say that ChatGPT can’t do this, and now it’s just a matter of convincing the world, including media bosses and readers alike, that there is value in what I do.
Last week at a party I asked a novelist for advice as I navigated the final two months before the publication of my new book, and her answer was blunt: “Get used to feeling awful.” This was likely an overstatement, something said to make us laugh. The last few months before publication are notoriously fraught – the book is at the printer so no further changes can be made, and there isn’t a ton left that an author can control. This is when you start seeing lots of nervous posts on social media. So suffice to say that I have been anticipating every single summer preview, hoping to see my name in a few. Alas.
The King Features summer reading list, along with the rest of the package that appears to have been vomited out by some AI model and not looked over once by human eyes, is just the latest insult by corporate media to people who care about the written word. It’s an insult to journalists who care about the truth, to authors who are looking to get any coverage they can, to book critics and anyone who works on putting books out into the world. More importantly, it’s an insult to readers.
