The 20th century was the century of language and the popular written word, thanks to the maximization of Gutenberg’s great invention, the printing press, in the mid-15th century. But since the late 20th and early 21st centuries, this traditional language, personified in the word—preferably written as the great transmitter of knowledge—has diversified, expanded, and been redefined into other informational, communicative, and learning languages ​​that operate in other dimensions, from audiovisual to digital, with artificial intelligence at the center.

This is the point of agreement among the writers and experts consulted by WMagazín. Among them is Michael Spitzer, author of The Infinite Rhythm. The author of Human Beings and Music Throughout History (Crítica) and director of the Department of Classical Music at the University of Liverpool, says: “I am very careful when differentiating between transhumanism and posthumanism. Transhumanism uses technology as a tool to extend and augment us, and that’s fine. All instruments are tools or extensions of our capabilities; a flute 40,000 years ago was also musical technology. But that’s different from posthumanism. A program was invented that can compose pieces in the style of Mozart or Chopin, which is rubbish. It can’t do it. Computers cannot replace human creativity, and they never will. Why? Because human music is about embodiment, emotion, death, and mortality. Creativity is always tied to the embodiment of death and life. We are musical animals, not musical machines”.

And, although music came first, human beings are also rooted in stories, in oral and written narratives. You can read the first part of the special HERE.

AI as an Author’s Assistant

Books created by artificial intelligence are already available in physical and online bookstores as just another offering. AI in this field is inductive. What we have are works with predictive texts based on pre-existing material and patterns provided to the program. They might imitate a style, but always within the framework of pre-existing content.

Artificial intelligence capable of original creation, starting from scratch and on its own initiative, does not exist. The machine possesses neither the creativity, imagination, intelligence, resources, nor complexity of human thought.

In this coexistence, the authorship of a human writer will become increasingly important, and an incentive for the creativity, imagination, and originality of authors.

The initial reaction of Pilar Álvarez, editorial director of Alianza, is that “no artificial intelligence will ever be able to replace the author or creator”. She then points out that “perhaps as a creative aid it will yield interesting results, something like auto-tune for musicians today, which at first I thought was ‘that’s not singing, it’s nothing,’ but then, the truth is, it has its charm and its own personality. I think there will soon be, if there isn’t already, a generation for whom AI support is as natural as computers are for us (it wasn’t that long ago that people were saying a novel written on a computer would be worse than traditional ones). Whether it will be the machine or the person who writes, I have no doubt: it will always be the person”.

Writers are already experimenting with this technology. Jean-Baptiste del Amo, author of works such as The Son of Man (Seix Barral), says that he fed his writings into an artificial intelligence program, gave the machine coordinates, and it wrote passages like his own. “It was amazing. Texts as if I had written them myself”, Del Amo confesses.

For Consuelo Sáizar de la Fuente, AI can be an excellent aid to the writing process, with certain limitations: “A few exploratory exercises are enough to show that the conversation ChatGPT is capable of is not, at least for now, equivalent to the reflection behind interacting with a person. AI can point to important information, but it doesn’t seem to discern or have the ability to cross-reference information and produce new knowledge”.

The final result is another matter. Pilar Álvarez poses a question and opens another door: “Will AI be a shadow intelligence? For a good writer, it will be just another tool; perhaps they’ll use it, perhaps they won’t.” “It will never make a bad writer good; I think that will never be within the machine’s reach—to take something poorly done and turn it into something good”.

This clue about AI in the shadows is followed by Javier Celaya, co-founder of Dosdoce and responsible for the launch of the digital platforms Bookwire, Storytel, and Podimo (the podcast and audiobook platform) in Spain and Latin America: “All of this fuels the doubt about the possibility that AI will become the ghostwriter or shadow author that has always been talked about in the publishing world: a book written by one person but signed by someone well-known, only with this AI, perhaps the author who has this technology will be able to do it themselves”.

All of this leads some writers, editors, and agents “to not look unfavorably upon the emergence of platforms that offer human authors technologies to improve their own texts”, says Celaya. He adds: “These ‘robots,’ after examining (reading) the manuscripts, provide authors with feedback on their texts, reviewing everything from the plot structure and the pacing of the story to the personality traits of the characters.” main characters, possible clichés, potentially offensive language, repetitive phrases, punctuation details, repeated use of adverbs and adjectives, even the use of the passive voice and possible spelling errors”.

Audiobooks, podcasts, proofreaders, management processes…

“The combination of human intelligence and technology can increase productivity”, explained Arantza Larrauri, Market Director for Europe and Latin America at De Marque, at the LIBER International Book Fair, 2025. According to several experts who participated in half a dozen conferences and roundtables, the key is not to demonize technology but to find ways to integrate it seamlessly and effectively into the analog world. Researching and resolving doubts are not mutually exclusive with learning new technology and using it to one’s own advantage.

AI is increasingly permeating the book industry, and its influence will grow, warns Javier Celaya. The expert points out that “AI is already present in processes such as copyright management to combat piracy, as well as text editing and translation. It is also increasingly used in book cover design, audio production, and in some genres. Artificial intelligence is reaching creative areas that we previously thought were reserved for humans: the creation of original content—in other words, works written and narrated by robots”.

In the world of audiobooks, in just five years, explains Celaya, artificial intelligence is seeping into the production of existing content with the support of robots: “Thanks to the great advances in the evolution of the quality of synthetic voices in Spanish, which are becoming increasingly similar to human voices, different sound production platforms have emerged that offer publishers the possibility of transforming their books into audio format with very high-quality synthetic voices. Several publishers are already testing these new technologies in order to bring more titles from very niche categories to the market that would never see the light of day due to the high cost of production in a recording studio”.

These artificial voices will allow publishers to produce more audiobooks and podcasts at a more competitive cost (currently around 50% cheaper), and that includes non-fiction, essays, children’s content, history, biographies, documentaries, etc., which could hardly be released in audio format with human voices, explains Celaya.

In this context, the head of Podimo asserts, “AI-based voices should not be perceived as a threat to professional narrators or authors, since both will also receive their corresponding royalties for works recorded with synthetic voices. However, it is very likely that in the very near future we will see a message on audiobook covers indicating ‘recorded with a human voice’ to highlight their added value”.

Although everything seems to indicate that robots, for now, are not going to replace humans in creating truly original content, Celaya is convinced that “humans and robots will indeed coexist. And this coexistence, far from frightening us—since humans always assume the worst when imagining a future where machines play a dominant role—should encourage our curiosity and desire to learn how we can use technology to our advantage, always within ethical and sustainable parameters, so that our content is better and reaches more people, which is ultimately what we all want”.

• With translation assistance from Robert Lienhard.

Complete series of Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature:

• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (1): Authorship and the New Role of Humans in Creation. You can watch it HERE.
• Artificial Intelligence in the World of Books and Literature (2): Writing and creativity in the posthumanist era. You can read the article HERE.
• Artificial intelligence in the world of books and literature (3): Cultural revolution and paradigm shift. You can read the article HERE.

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