A new study by Proyecto451, the Buenos Aires–based research firm, found that more than 75% of publishing professionals in Spanish-speaking markets believe the adoption of artificial intelligence in the industry is unavoidable, while only 16.9% expect that adoption will not bring significant changes.
The report, titled "Uses and Perceptions of AI among Professionals in the Book Industry," surveyed 735 book industry professionals across 20 countries, primarily from Argentina, Spain, and Mexico. The research aimed to measure AI tool adoption and examine perceptions surrounding the technology's implementation.
Publishers comprised 46.7% of respondents, with the remainder comprising translators, editors, graphic designers, booksellers, and literary agents.
The study found that only 20% of participants believe AI could negatively impact the industry, with optimism increasing alongside industry experience. According to the report, 53.7% of professionals with more than 10 years in the field view AI as a positive or very positive resource.
"Humans enjoy being apocalyptic and dramatic; they invent new bogeymen all the time," said one participant. "AI doesn't represent the end of humanity or the book industry. Calm down. Breathe."
However, self-employed professionals, particularly illustrators and translators, expressed more negative or cautious attitudes, perceiving AI as a potential threat to their livelihoods through task automation.
One respondent noted that there are two sides to AI. "As an editor, it's beneficial because it helps me save costs," the respondent said. "As a writer, designer, translator, and proofreader, it's a calamity that eliminates jobs and lowers the quality/originality of works."
Cost optimization and task automation emerged as the most valuable advantages for respondents, who reported current applications including style correction, translation, brainstorming, information analysis, and marketing campaign management. Only a small group of respondents said that AI will create new reading experiences or significantly improve literary quality.
In addition to potential job losses, among the downsides cited by respondents were concerns about the spread of biased or false information and the loss of quality and originality in published work.
"I'm quite concerned about the impact it may have on us, independent publishers," another participant said. "Although it may facilitate our work as a tool, there is also the other side: the automation that could lead independent authors to no longer seek us out, rendering us obsolete in the face of the 'ease' of automatic editing by AI."
Despite these concerns, most respondents reported no legal or contractual barriers limiting their daily AI use, with many organizations lacking specific policies.
Regarding AI's creative capabilities, broad agreement exists that the technology cannot yet produce genuinely novel content or match human translation quality. "From what I've seen, the texts generated by AI tend to be of rather poor quality," one professional said. "It's not intelligence; it's pure algorithmic prediction."
