Why Generative AI Won't Disrupt Books

In the early weeks of 2023, as worry about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools was ratcheting up dramatically in the public conversation, a tweet passed through the many interlocking corners of Book Twitter. "Imagine if every Book is converted into an Animated Book and made 10x more engaging," it read. Huge opportunity here to disrupt Kindle and Audible." The tweet's author, Gaurav Munjal, cofounded Unacademy, which bills itself as "India's largest learning platform"--and within the edtech context, where digitally animated books can be effective teaching tools, his suggestion might read a certain way. But to a broader audience, the sweeping proclamation that AI will make "every" book "10x more engaging" seemed absurd, a solution in search of a problem, and one predicated on the idea that people who choose to read narrative prose (instead of, say, watching a film or playing a game) were somehow bored or not engaged with their unanimated tomes.