“A machine can write stereotypical romance novels just as well”

In two weeks, on October 18th, the 75th Frankfurt Book Fair in the post-war period begins.

What the industry is particularly concerned about in its anniversary year is, as in all areas of culture, artificial intelligence (AI). A machine can write stereotypical romance novels just as well as a human, says Juergen Boos, director of the book fair. Writing programs are already being used for this today. “It used to be science fiction, now it’s real.”

Boos finds the possible consequences for translators more problematic. So far, AI has been used primarily for non-fiction texts such as instruction manuals. Boos still believes in the superiority of humans when it comes to literary translations. That is unclear “Gray area” in copyright. Who owns the rights to a machine-generated text? And what about the rights to the texts that the AI ​​used? “We have a huge issue here – and it involves a lot of money”says Boos.

There are also generational questions: “The old white men and women in our industry are unsettled”says Boos. They felt challenged by a young, loud generation that demanded new sensitivity. The book fair is the right place to negotiate this, says Boos.

The most famous guest will be author Salman Rushdie. The guest country is the small, literary largely undiscovered Slovenia.

Ticket sales are currently higher than in 2019. At that time, more than 300,000 visitors came to Frankfurt. The number of exhibitors also increased again by ten percent. Last year there were around 4,000 from almost 100 countries.

The anniversary comes at a time in which the German book industry is struggling. Sales in 2022 were 9.44 billion euros, 1.9 percent less than in 2021.