This edition examines the ALCS report on authors and AI training, Pleias’s openly-licensed and energy-efficient LLMs, new content deals from OpenAI/Future Plc and Bertelsmann/ElevenLabs, the risks of AI-generated podcasts, and practical ideas for working creatively with AI.

This edition looks at Steven Johnson’s Long Context project, the Activate 2025 outlook on AI search and disintermediation risks for publishers, the rise of AI shopping assistants like Amazon Rufus, and tech news including Amazon’s expanded Anthropic investment and the new Model Context Protocol standard.

This edition unpacks the HarperCollins–Microsoft AI licensing deal and its wider implications for trade publishing, OpenAI’s o1 models reaching the API, Gemini’s new memory feature, Ben Affleck on AI and craft, research on AI writing in Substack newsletters, and US dates for the IPG AI training course.

This edition covers Google’s new AI video tool for Workspace customers, a US federal ruling dismissing a copyright suit against OpenAI, fresh data on AI adoption in publishing jobs, AI’s role in research integrity and creative writing, and award news for the IPG AI training programme.

This edition covers the dispute over an AI-generated cover for Jodi Picoult’s new book, Anthropic’s new CSV analysis feature in Claude, the launch of ChatGPT Search, and how AI-driven search could reshape publishers’ relationships with the open web.

Thanks to Graham Bell from EDItEUR for inviting me to speak at the 45th International Supply Chain Seminar in Frankfurt this afternoon, to update the AI presentation I gave last year. Giving an update meant less time on first principles, and it was a really interesting prompt to step back, compare this year’s slides with the 2023 deck and see what had changed. Of course, massive development on the technology side, more legal uncertainty, and greater awareness of the environmental impact of AI. But some points, like the importance of keeping human decision makers in the loop, are perennial.

I gave a short presentation on how publishers are using AI at the Society of Indexers Conference today. It was great to give the publisher perspective ahead of a fascinating presentation from Tanya Izzard on experimenting with LLMs for indexing: the mix of general and specific themes led into a lively discussion.

Thanks very much to the team at BookNet Canada for inviting me to speak at their Tech Forum webinar this evening on the elements of a balanced and ethical AI strategy for publishers. It’s hard to do justice to such an expansive topic in a forty minute presentation, but I discussed a number of key aspects including the pace of change and capability overhang in AI, copyright and Fair Use, accuracy, provenance, the environmental impact of AI and its increasing integration with all elements of the publishing application stack.