AI and Publishing: Where Things Stand

Generative AI has been in the book business long enough that the question is no longer whether writers and publishing professionals need to pay attention, but how to make sound decisions when the law, the technology, and industry norms are shifting month to month. In this session, publishing industry expert Jane Friedman offers a briefing on the current landscape, drawn from her ongoing reporting for her newsletter The Bottom Line. She'll cover the legal picture (such as the $1.5 billion Anthropic settlement, now approved and moving toward payouts); the new suits against Google and Meta brought by publishers; and what the US Copyright Office actually says about copyrighting AI-assisted work. She looks at what publishers and agents are doing, from AI detection systems and manuscript summarization to AI narration, translation, and the animation and short-form video deals at HarperCollins. She'll also comment on industry flashpoints, including new research arguing that AI-assisted titles are diluting the market. Whatever your position on AI, you'll leave with a practical sense of what's happening in the current market and what questions remain unanswered (spoiler alert: mostly all of them).

Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs and received a starred review from Library Journal.