Amazon Has Everything it Needs To Make Massively Popular Algorithm-Driven Fiction (qz.com) 79
Thu-Huong Ha, writing for Quartz: Amazon's power in books extends way beyond its ability to sell them super cheap and super fast. This year, a little over 40% of the print books sold in the US moved through the site, according to estimates from Bookstat, which tracks US online book retail. (NPD, which tracks 85% of US trade print sales, declined to provide data broken out by retailer.) In the US, Amazon dominates ebook sales and hosts hundreds of thousands of self-published ebooks on its platforms, many exclusively. It looms over the audiobook scene, in retail as well as production, and is one of the biggest marketplaces for used books in the US. Amazon also makes its own books -- more than 1,500 last year.
All that power comes with great data, which Amazon's publishing arm is well positioned to exploit in the interest of making books tailored exactly to what people want -- down to which page characters should meet on or how many lines of dialogue they should exchange. Though Amazon declined to comment specifically on whether it uses data to shape or determine the content of its own books, the company acknowledged that authors are recruited for their past sales (as is common in traditional publishing). "Amazon Publishing titles are thoughtfully acquired by our team -- made up of publishing-industry veterans and long-time Amazonians -- with many factors taken into consideration," says Amazon Publishing publisher Mikyla Bruder, "including the acquiring editor's enthusiasm, the strength of the story, quality of the writing, editorial fit for our list, and author backlist/comparable titles' sales track."
Amazon's Kindle e-reader, first released in 2007, is a data-collection device that doubles as reading material. Kindle knows the minutiae of how people read: what they highlight, the fonts they prefer, where in a book they lose interest, what kind of books they finish quickly, and which books gets skimmed rather than read all the way through. A year after the Kindle came out, Amazon acquired Audible. Audiobooks have been a rare bright spot in the publishing industry, with double-digit growth in total sales for the past few years. Audible now touts itself as the "world's largest seller and producer of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word entertainment," and its site has around 450,000 audio programs.
All that power comes with great data, which Amazon's publishing arm is well positioned to exploit in the interest of making books tailored exactly to what people want -- down to which page characters should meet on or how many lines of dialogue they should exchange. Though Amazon declined to comment specifically on whether it uses data to shape or determine the content of its own books, the company acknowledged that authors are recruited for their past sales (as is common in traditional publishing). "Amazon Publishing titles are thoughtfully acquired by our team -- made up of publishing-industry veterans and long-time Amazonians -- with many factors taken into consideration," says Amazon Publishing publisher Mikyla Bruder, "including the acquiring editor's enthusiasm, the strength of the story, quality of the writing, editorial fit for our list, and author backlist/comparable titles' sales track."
Amazon's Kindle e-reader, first released in 2007, is a data-collection device that doubles as reading material. Kindle knows the minutiae of how people read: what they highlight, the fonts they prefer, where in a book they lose interest, what kind of books they finish quickly, and which books gets skimmed rather than read all the way through. A year after the Kindle came out, Amazon acquired Audible. Audiobooks have been a rare bright spot in the publishing industry, with double-digit growth in total sales for the past few years. Audible now touts itself as the "world's largest seller and producer of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word entertainment," and its site has around 450,000 audio programs.
Just generate the books (Score:2)
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So it will generate loli rape books for incels and black cock harlequin books for the micropeened, peckerwood white nationalists.
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Re:The best spinner (Score:2)
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I finally understand this APK nonsense.
It's Amazon's beta testing it's story writing AI!
Seems they have quite a bit of work that needs be done, though....
following Hollywood and TV (Score:4, Insightful)
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Try reading a book and skip the odd page or two. I used to make that mistake while reading a short story for English class at high school.
"Dr Evil ran from compound with the secret weapon he had stolen from the research lab and ran towards his waiting escape ..." [NEXT PAGE] ... "donkey. He put his belongings in the satchels on either side, climbed into the saddle and gave the creature a gentle kick. The donkey brayed and he begin his slow ascent up the mountain. Behind him he could hear men shouting, but s
It doesn't really (Score:5, Insightful)
So great, they have tons of metrics, but they don't have the ability to extract the metrics they need to make a book interesting. And that is entirely the problem.
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They can tell things like when people stop reading in their Kindle, but they don't have really great data to determine why the person stopped reading.
I think they do, and it's because of the volume. They don't even need to know any more than whether someone finished a book, but they are also getting other useful information. Whether they then looked for more books from that author, or more books like the book they just read (etc.) is probably more useful information than how long they took to read certain pages. That can be influenced by external factors. But if they simply process the text of books to characterize them, and then look at which elements d
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But if they simply process the text of books to characterize them,
It's not simple, though. Those kinds of AI algorithms, presumably that actually understand the text, don't exist yet.
Pornosex... (Score:2)
So, the mechanically written books for the masses imagined in Orwell's 1984 may become a reality ? If i recall well it was called "pornosex".
Well, you can already automate generation of postmodern essays so why not ?
On of the many: http://www.elsewhere.org/journ... [elsewhere.org]
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This is California They would mandate the temperatures that water boils and freezes at.
Don't forget the ever popular titles (Score:3)
I'm really looking forward to "Fifty shades of Magic", and "Ready, Player".
In the end I think pretty much all of the AI generated books will come off like really poor fanfic with cringe-inducing sex sprinkled throughout.
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AI generated books will come off like really poor fanfic with cringe-inducing sex sprinkled throughout.
Isn't cringe-inducing sex one of the main hallmarks of really poor fanfics?
Everything but fuxxoring readers, dumbasses. (Score:3)
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I am sorry but there are tons of people who read and write crud all the time. Published crud will be cheaper that is all.
I recall the interview of some guy form a French recording company. He was explaining that he was making dance album with one guy paid to make quickly rhythms and mixed parts of nonsensical sentences uttered by a female singer paid a flat fee.
He added "Our approach may sound cynical but this is how we make money we use later to produce real music made by real artists".
Except i do not expe
See: Big Mouth and Oh, Hello! (Score:2)
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You must be kidding right? Have you seen the top 10 best seller list? Hint: Harry Potter books were most of them. John Grisham. Pure junk.
I am a writer. It seems to me that Amazon, or anyone else, is welcome to generate as much junk as they like. I don't see that it's going to affect any writer who creates substantive, complex, original works. The two are aimed at quite different markets -- but both are real markets, and if people want to enjoy, and spend money on, let's call it "computer-generated drivel", then it's not obvious why Amazon or someone else shouldn't profitably cater to that market; I don't see why I would care whether some aut
More LIkely (Score:5, Funny)
Re:More LIkely (Score:4, Funny)
Would that be "Harem Superhero Urban Fantasy"? (Score:3)
Or some similar utter crap? I have been wondering where all that trash comes from...
Pricing (Score:2)
Basically without any scarcity (since the content can be produced almost instantly, and without any limitations at all due to quantity) -- there's nothing stopping the market being glutted with this crap, and the price asymptotically dropping to zero...
So would the end result be that human authors get priced out of existence, since they can't compete at all -- or perhaps in the long run worth it in the long run for amazon to make content like this?
Sounds like SCIgen for fiction (Score:1)
I have little doubt that Amazon had the necessary corpus to generate books including ones containing all the elements that people look for in a good book. That said, well designed and programmed robots can make reasonable food out of correct quantities of each ingredients in the correct order, but after a while it will all just begin to taste the same and be bland. In the case of the software generated stories, some of it might b
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some of it might be accidentally good enough to make it into a literary publications if all of the vogue themes show up;
Seems unlikely: with those metrics, Amazon will most likely attempt to make books that people actually want to read
Big Data Buzzword Bingo (Score:4, Insightful)
I believe it when I see it. Sure, companies do collect a whole truckload of data all the time and AI has made some huge progress in the last 10 years, but in terms of end user features I have seen pretty much zero of that ever being used to create something useful.
If they wanted to they could run face detection and AI on every movie out there and tell you exactly how long each character is on screen, with which characters they share a scene, what they are doing in the scene and so on. But they don't. We are still stuck with recommendation algorithms that are complete junk and provide no explorability.
In their store they can't even manage to group related items together. Want to buy a book or movie from a series? Better know what you are looking for already, since they down show you which are part of the series or in what order they go. A trip to Wikipedia is often needed to figure things out.
For most of the items they sell they can't even bother to scan the backside.
There is a lot of cool stuff one could do with all that collected data, but I have yet to see somebody actually do something with it.
I really don't believe it (Score:5, Informative)
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I agree, Amazon couldn't possibly understand what you might want to buy, despite how often you purchase from them and use their website. Say, if you purchase an accessory for your motorcycle, it suggests a similar part for a bicycle. I also disbelieve that Amazon could create a novel that would be any better than the works they already offer for sale.
*Preceding message auto-generated by Alphabet/DeepMind. Check out Google Books today!*
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Loved it (Score:2)
I love the one where the guy in the hat killed the other guy in the hat.
Not impressed ... (Score:2)
... Trump does that with actual intelligence.
[sorry, low-hanging fruit]
This will be in video games first (Score:2)
Everything they need? (Score:2)
Sure, they have words, sentences, story outlines, distribution infrastructure. That's everything they need, right?
There are intangible qualities that AI can't master, and won't for a long time. Amazon can't even figure out what I want to buy yet, much less what I want to read!