AI in publishing: Where we are and what’s coming next

George Walkley, publishing technology expert and provider of the IPG’s training in Artificial Intelligence, reflects on its impact so far and future opportunities

With all of the technical developments, headlines and industry discussions around Artificial Intelligence, it’s hard to believe that ChatGPT is only 14 months old. But then little of the pace of development in AI has been normal. It took 16 years for mobile phones to reach 100 million users. The internet took seven years, Facebook four and a half and TikTok nine months. It took ChatGPT just 90 days.

It's no surprise that AI has preoccupied many publishers. Since we introduced the IPG’s AI training offer at the Autumn Conference last September, we’ve delivered open training days to IPG members, bespoke training to individual companies and previews of it at the Frankfurt and Sharjah Book Fairs. All told, the training has reached delegates from nearly 200 publishing organisations around the world, with great feedback.

It's been a privilege to work with the IPG on the training as it has given me a ringside seat to observe how publishers are thinking about strategy and workflows in the age of AI. One of the joys of the IPG is the variety of publishers that make up the organisation: from entrepreneurial startups to publicly listed multinationals, and from general trade houses to specialists in every conceivable area of publishing. All have taken part in the training, and notwithstanding their diversity, there are several consistent themes which emerge from six months of experience working with them.

First, the pace of change is not slowing. Every week brings new developments: from technology companies, from government and from a growing body of publishers’ experience in actually using these tools. It’s why I’m really looking forward to speaking at the IPG’s Spring Conference in London, to update members on what’s changed and get further feedback.

Secondly, that blistering pace means that organisations will learn through experimentation, not documentation. From the outset, we were clear that our training should be hands-on and give publishers a sense of how AI could be applied. Of course, there are important issues to deal with, such as copyright, provenance, authenticity and accuracy. The training addresses them at length. But while we wait for them to be resolved, there are immediate, lower risk and higher reward opportunities to improve productivity and creativity that exist across organisations and throughout the lifecycle of a book. This is emphatically not just a marketing opportunity or something to outsource, but a chance to bring together colleagues from all departments and think through the operating model for the business.

Finally, this is just the beginning of a revolution. I’ve seen several stages of digital transformation throughout my career as a bookseller and a publisher—notably the rise of ecommerce, and then ebooks and audiobooks. But what this current technological revolution most reminds me of is seeing the internet for the first time as an undergraduate in the 1990s. It seemed to offer boundless potential, and raised many similar IP issues to AI. But looking at those early, dial-up internet experiences, it would have been hard to conceive the pervasive, broadband, social, multimedia web of the 2020s. It’s why in thinking about AI, I keep returning to Amara’s Law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run, and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

Besides the IPG Spring Conference, we’re delivering more bespoke training for publishers in three countries, and offering another open enrolment course for individuals and businesses on 30 April, which will be delivered online. If you’d like to find out more, do talk to me, Louise Cameron or Bridget Shine at the Spring Conference or email the IPG team.