My coworker published a book written by/with genAI
A colleague of mine that I have been working with for years, and get along with pretty well, recently shared that they had completed a personal project of theirs: Publishing an illustrated non-fiction book.
We did a round of congratulations, but I couldn't shake the idea that this is unexpected of them, as they had never mentioned before being a writer of any sorts. But that could also be just me, I thought, because maybe we just never discussed this kind of stuff when talking about our personal lives.
A link to some webstore was shared, I navigated to it and checked the cover art. The drawings had this by now very recognizable and unmistakable sheen to it. There was no illustrator attributed anywhere. The book's topic was also very niche and scientific, and not related to our professional work, nor any of their hobbies.
So I asked them, did they write this all theirselves? Or did they collaborate with someone? Being all chill about it, they admitted all content was made using AI.
They seemed legitimately excited and proud about this, and they mentioned having worked on this project for months, so I felt like this wasn't the time or place to talk about why I try to steer away from genAI as far as I can. The second reason I can't bring it up is because I'm required by work to "embrace AI" (in other words, I need to keep my opinions to myself in order to keep my job).
I'm just annoyed at all of this (gestures vaguely at everything in the linked article above), and how this well-intentioned book release just adds to the online mess where I have to stop my mother-in-law from accidentally buying AI slop in a reputable online web store. Where I have to do side quests to figure out if a comic online is made by an actual person. Where I have to search through a music artist's social media and online history, to see if they're real people.
When we meet up in real life and they hand me a copy, I'll try my best to act excited. Maybe encourage them to write from their hearts instead of collaborating with some LLM. And maybe I can suggest to do the art?