Recently I’ve been doing some research on the size and scope of the UK publishing industry, based on data from Companies House, which is one of the wonders of the world when it comes to open data. This research is highly relevant for my work as an independent consultant and as policy advisor for the Independent Publishers Guild, which represents over 600 book and journal publishers of all sizes. The other trade body, the Publishers Association lists 168 members at the time of writing, particularly larger, corporate publishers—though there is some overlap between the two organisations’ memberships. The UK publishing sector is world leading, representing over £7 billion of revenue (for context, the steel industry represents about £1.7 billion and fisheries about £1 billion). So it’s worth understanding.

Last September, BookNet Canada invited me to speak at their Tech Forum webinar on the use of AI in publishing. Looking back at my slides, it’s remarkable how much the world has moved on since then, though the eight principles I set out have held up pretty well.

I was invited to deliver a short webinar today for the Swedish Publishers Association and its international affiliates. It was great to see a very strong turnout and thank you to my hosts for arranging it. I talked about recent trends in AI, how publishers are approaching it, and examples of how AI tools are being used.

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.