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Barnes & Noble CEO backs selling AI-written books in stores (www.the-independent.com)
submitted 2 days ago by sanitation@lemmy.radio to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 9 points 1 day ago

Ah yes, another headline with no context.

“Yes, I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t,” the British businessman responded. “And that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it.”

“So as long as an AI-written book says it’s an AI-written book and doesn’t pretend to be something else and isn’t ripping off somebody else, as long as that’s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them.”

[-] HertzDentalBar 5 points 22 hours ago

Sure I get his position.... But he's wrong. AI books will devalue romance, penny novels, sci-fi and many more quick and dirty type of writings.

[-] agent_nycto@lemmy.world 2 points 21 hours ago

I mean ai by nature is ripping someone off but ok. Thanks for posting the context though, much appreciated

[-] Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

Oh yea, I don't actually like it, and would rather they refuse. But it's not as bad as the headline makes it seem.

[-] username123@sh.itjust.works 1 points 18 hours ago

It's worse. Sugarcoating bullshit to make it more palatable while having at least all of the negative effect that was originally imagined.

[-] Crit@lemmy.wtf 13 points 2 days ago

Why the fuck would anyone buy an AI generated book instead of... Generating their own? If they generate it they even get to change the story on the fly, a printed out AI book is like the worst lmao

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

You assume the buyer would know.

[-] queueBenSis@sh.itjust.works 2 points 23 hours ago

and that the buyer wants to create the story. believe it or not, some people just want to read something that came out of someone else’s imagination (in the case of fiction). AI just facilitates the story telling for the idea originator (FKA author)

[-] kandykarter@lemmy.ca 77 points 2 days ago

Honestly, I hope they do. It'd be funny to see the sales figures. I don't care how much anyone likes AI, but nobody wants to read AI novels.

[-] LastYearsIrritant@sopuli.xyz 14 points 2 days ago

I don't get why people think they can have a career as a LLM middleman.

If I wanted to read a book written by a plagiarism machine about a subject I want, I'll just ask it myself.

I don't need someone else to ask it to write a book.

Same for LLM movies, or music.

If Hollywood thinks it can fire all the creatives and just spam out LLM generated content, well, so can the audience...

[-] isleepinahammock 1 points 21 hours ago

It's like anything. I can cook my own food. That doesn't mean I don't go out to restaurants sometimes. I could use an LLM myself to write a novel. But it wouldn't be the same novel. And there is some skill in prompt writing. Even then, just the sheer time to generate a novel-length coherent work from small snippets of chat windows is still a large investment of time.

[-] nulluser@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Yes, but also no. Plenty of people will buy and read these books and watch AI slop movies. Everyone can cook healthy meals at home, and many do, but there's still a big market for fast food restaurants and prepackaged microwave meals.

[-] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 12 points 2 days ago

Can confirm. I use AI quite a bit, including writing stories where I have editorial control (that's a dumb decision, she does the other thing!). The best AIs might be able to manage one short passable chapter, but it's going to be shot quality without massive amounts of hand holding and rewriting.

It can be entertaining in a choose your own adventure sense where each page really only needs to be barely coherent and minimally cohesive with the other pages. I sure as hell wouldn't pay $25 for an AI-penned book.

[-] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 12 points 2 days ago

use AI quite a bit

shot quality

heh

[-] MagicShel@lemmy.zip 9 points 2 days ago

Hey well at least typos serve as a marker that everything is human written. You know, for all the comments about how AI is fancy autocorrect, why the hell is autocorrect still such fucking garbage??? Just do the things with the damn thing already!

[-] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago

It’s funny that LLMs generally have stellar spelling and grammar, but LLM/AI assisted autocorrect, at least the version on the iPhone, is horribly inferior to standard autocorrect.

Now that I read what you said again, I think I just said the same thing with other words. But I’m so tired I’m just writing what I’m thinking and I should go to sleep, but I’m here writing what I’m thinking.

Anyway, I agree with you!

[-] ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip 1 points 18 hours ago

Your iPhone doesn't have to boil a lake to make those corrections slightly better, though.

[-] LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 points 2 days ago

I would rather read... anything else? It's not like we have a shortage of books and especially not bad books.

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[-] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 16 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Now to fuck up their plan by training their AI on House of Leaves.

[-] Jarix@lemmy.world 49 points 2 days ago

Finally a book burning tradition I can support starting

[-] renegadespork@lemmy.jelliefrontier.net 30 points 2 days ago

The first book burning where 0 knowledge is lost.

[-] Insekticus@aussie.zone 20 points 2 days ago

So long as you steal the books - absolutely don't give them a cent or we're just supporting the industry.

[-] FrChazzz@lemmus.org 4 points 2 days ago

Legit ethical question: since LLMs are trained on stolen knowledge and art, is stealing an AI book theft? Also, given the current US laws about how an AI "work" cannot be copyrighted, what's to stop me from taking someone's AI "book" and just slapping my name on the cover and reselling it?

[-] Insekticus@aussie.zone 4 points 2 days ago

Absolutely nothing stops you.

Thanks to AI, where no true creativity has gone into the process of writing, it has no inherent value nor creator - for all intents and purposes, it may as well have suddenly apparated into existence. As soon as it gets created, it's an "early bird gets the worm" type situation of staking a claim to ownership. Like a car that suddenly manifested into the world, created by no man, made of no man's materials - it's a free-for-all.

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[-] badgermurphy@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

There are jurisdictions where AI content can't be copyrighted. I don't see how an AI-written book could even exist in those places, since anyone could post it online for anyone to read.

[-] isleepinahammock 1 points 21 hours ago

This isn't really true. The courts have held that there needs to be some human involvement, but that involvement can be pretty minimal.

[-] badgermurphy@lemmy.world 1 points 21 hours ago

That seems a strange carve out considering that no LLMs do anything without prompting, presumably by a human. Depending on the wording, the law may literally be unable to apply to any real scenarios.

But if that's the case, perhaps a page out of the SovCit playbook would work: bombard them with lawsuits for copyrighting the work to prove it was written with human involvement.

[-] FatCrab@slrpnk.net 5 points 2 days ago

Effectively China is the only major market where AI generated outputs are granted copyright. And even then, it's a hard maybe. This makes zero sense to me as a business move.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

You can find many copyrighted works online, people still buy them.

[-] workerONE@lemmy.world 32 points 2 days ago

It was a greasy Thursday morning and the air smelled of Novocaine and Pepsi. Gary shifted in his seat to take the weight off of his ears.

[-] phutatorius@lemmy.zip 14 points 2 days ago

As long as they are clearly marked as AI-generated, I can safely ignore it.

Oh, yeah, and also: Barnes and Noble is still in business?

[-] Jhex@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

As long as they are clearly marked as AI-generated

As clearly labeled as all the food products are?

They will not label them properly because that won't sell; if they happen to be labeling now, they will stop in the future. This is the entire "vote with your wallet" strategy they know they have control over since they will obfuscate all the valuable information we need to make informed decisions.

[-] Simulation6@sopuli.xyz 7 points 2 days ago

The one near me has a large kids section and a number of events for kids. They also have a coffee shop and pleasant reading area. I think they still also sell books.

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[-] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 day ago

Ew

[-] lemmyng@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago

Then I back no longer walking into a Barnes & Nobles and giving them my time or business.

I've got the archive for a better selection of books.

[-] FireWire400@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

Can't wait to read about people dying because they believed AI-generated books on foraging, or medicine, or BDSM... The LEAST they could do is label the books as AI.

[-] boonhet@sopuli.xyz 1 points 23 hours ago

Article literally says he's fine with selling AI books as long as they're labeled as AI.

[-] isleepinahammock 1 points 21 hours ago

Of course, we know how this will actually go down. AI generated works are going to be much cheaper to produce. Therefore they'll be me more profitable if they can sell at the same price. Barnes and Noble thus has a strong incentive to not carefully label AI works as AI-generated.

Ideally they would all be in their own section. AI-generated works are only allowed in the part of the store that is labeled as such. That's the proper way to do this.

But that's not how it will actually be done. Buried somewhere in the fine print inside the back cover of the book will be a long paragraph, one sentence of which mentions the work is AI generated. Or the inside back cover will have a QR code labeled "notes on this work," and there will be a hundred page long legal disclaimer that briefly mentions the book is AI generated.

[-] TipRing@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago

When I worked at B&N way back in the day the policy was to sell any book that was legal to sell, though many would have to be ordered. In that regard, as long as AI slop is legal to sell I don't have any particular problem with a store selling it.

I wouldn't buy it, of course. It's bound to be wretched.

[-] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 19 points 2 days ago

So this is how society crumbles. Not with a nuclear explosion. Not with war. But instead with brain crippling stupidity. This is the world we live in now. Book stores filled with romance novels about Romeo and Julie. Where the author writes a bit about biting the thumb, but it goes in a very literal, violent and bloody direction that's supposed to be romantic.

Never thought I'd live to see the day where smart people AVOID reading books!

[-] orclev@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

Every day we get a little closer to Idiocracy being real.

[-] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago

Oh, we’re way past "close", much too deep in it.

[-] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

Fine, just as long as they contain all of it in an "AI Slop" section.

[-] artyom@piefed.social 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Why would I pay money to purchase a genAI book when I could just have Copilot gen me one up at home!?

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[-] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago

WHAT THE FUCK.

[-] CapuccinoCoretto@lemmy.world 12 points 2 days ago

I back AI CEOs. Can't do much worse.

[-] goatinspace@feddit.org 7 points 2 days ago

[-] db2@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago

Now I'm going to not go in that store twice as hard. 👍

[-] IAmNorRealTakeYourMeds@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

Spent the past decade writing a novel, put so much effort on it. chances are that this bullshit will make it impossible for me to get it published

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this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
254 points (100.0% liked)

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