At a LinkedIn Live panel titled "Beyond Publishing: When AI Is Your Ally," on June 26, industry experts gathered to discuss the impact of artificial intelligence on the publishing world. The conversation, hosted by Christopher Kenneally, featured PW's Edward Nawotka, Shimmr.ai CEO Nadim Sadek, and Circles of AI cofounder Rochelle Grayson.

Shimmr.ai's Sadek framed AI as "allied intelligence" rather than artificial intelligence, emphasizing its role in enhancing creativity. "AI liberates creativity amongst the silent," Sadek said. "I'm really excited by that because there's a whole pile of thinking, probably in the majority of the population, that we haven't heard or seen."

Sadek highlighted AI's potential to spark innovation through "conceptual collision" and enable creators to explore unfamiliar topics. He explained, "What AI allows you to do is to get out of your groove. And to tramp around in a different groove, which five minutes previously, you knew nothing about."

Discussing Shimmr.ai's focus on book advertising, Sadek described their process: "We've got three machines. The first one extracts the book DNA by looking at plots, its structure, its tensions, its protagonists, antagonists... plus a psychological profile." The data is then used to generate targeted advertising and find potential readers.

Grayson of Circles of AI emphasized the importance of making AI accessible to non-technical users. "We decided to launch Circles of AI to allow a variety of circles to come together and talk about AI often with perhaps different lenses," she explained

Grayson outlined her approach for how publishers can integrate AI: "The first step is to identify the areas that you want to do the integration for and ideally start with something small." She stressed the importance of understanding AI's decision-making process, suggesting users ask "why" the AI made specific changes.

Addressing ethical considerations, Grayson said, "there definitely needs to be a very transparent conversation around how you are using AI both internally and externally." She also emphasized the need for crisis management planning: "You should have a plan in place. Who's responsible, who's accountable? Who responds?"

Nawotka discussed recent developments in AI rights management, highlighting the launch of Created by Humans, a company started by Scribd co-founder Trip Adler that officially went live June 25. "The idea is to find a way to compensate authors specifically for their work and for the use of their work in LLMs [large language models],” Nawotka explained.

The panelists agreed that AI presents both challenges and opportunities for the publishing industry. Sadek suggested that publishers should invest in "developing author-facing, enhancing of creativity and productivity AI bots."

Grayson noted varying attitudes towards AI across age groups: "The younger the students, the more excited they are about the possibilities. But the older the students, a lot more skepticism seems to have crept in."

Nawotka concluded by emphasizing the need for balance in AI adoption: "We tend to use this default word 'content,' which I think really devalues everybody's work. I think we need to refer to things as to what they are. Are they essays? Are they memoirs? Is it a piece of fiction? This specificity, as well as putting a work in context, is how we assign value to content. If we can force tech to use the same diction we do, it can go some way toward hopefully balancing the conversation.”

"Beyond Publishing: When AI Is Your Ally" is available to watch in full on LinkedIn.