Like many people in the publishing industry, I have been experimenting with using AI tools as part of my daily workflow. The technology is without doubt a powerful aid. For example, being able to upload an audio recording of an interview and have the LLM transcribe it has been transformative for me.

As a tool for writing, the results are more mixed. All too often, when presented with a set of facts that I prompt the AI to transform into narrative, the AI struggles to ascertain relevance or context and instead employs hyperbole or a false sense of urgency to impart meaning or relevance. It is much the same technique social media and advertising uses to grab your attention. My solution to working with AI to get the best results is a surprisingly simple one: I end every prompt with the instruction, “make it boring.” The results are more accurate, more true-to-life. (Try it, it works.)

So, it turns out that after nearly two years of development—ChatGPT was launched just a few weeks after the 2022 Frankfurt Book Fair—what AI is worst at is exactly the one thing the publishing industry is best at: storytelling.

Storytelling is at the heart of the Frankfurt Book Fair, the very reason it exists. The exchange of stories between cultures and languages is itself facilitated by storytelling, between publishers and literary agents and right representatives, who sit in urgent conversation at small tables in 30-minute increments trying to seduce each other with stories.

There have been numerous efforts to replace face-to-face rights meetings with video conferences and to automate dealmaking. Few have succeeded.

Why? There’s something about human emotion that best tells—and sells—a story.

The experience of coming to Frankfurt is about experiencing serendipity and surprise—two qualities that also evade the AI. Frankfurt is about quite the opposite of what the AI can, at its best, offer—predictability—and at its worst—hallucination and hyperbole. What we want out of our experience of Frankfurt is something quite the opposite of boring. It is seduction by story.

A version of this story previously ran in the 2024 PW Frankfurt Show Daily.