For bookworms, reading a headline like "School District Uses ChatGPT to Help Remove Library Books" can be blood boiling. As Vulture put it earlier this week, it creates the sense that the artificial intelligence tool is once again "[taking] out its No. 1 enemy: original work." Using ChatGPT's guidance, the Mason City Community School District removed 19 titles--including Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Toni Morrison's Beloved--from its library shelves. But there is another truth: Educators who must comply with vague laws about "age-appropriate" books with "descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act" have only so many options. Signed into law by Governor Kim Reynolds in May, Iowa's SF 496 is one of those "parental rights" bills that have become popular with Republican lawmakers of late and seek to limit discussion of sexuality and gender identity in schools.

It certainly didn't take long for AI's other shoe to drop, what with the emergent technology already being perverted to commit confidence scams and generate spam content. We can now add censorship to that list as the Globe Gazette reports the school board of Mason City, Iowa has begun leveraging AI technology to cultivate lists of potentially bannable books from the district's libraries ahead of the 2023/24 school year. In May, the Republican-controlled state legislature passed, and Governor Kim Reynolds subsequently signed, Senate File 496 (SF 496), which enacted sweeping changes to the state's education curriculum. Specifically it limits what books can be made available in school libraries and classrooms, requiring titles to be "age appropriate" and without "descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act," per Iowa Code 702.17. But ensuring that every book in the district's archives adhere to these new rules is quickly turning into a mammoth undertaking.

Without a doubt, artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most important new technologies in the world, with the power to create entirely new industries and professions. Stanford professor Andrew Ng, in fact, has called AI "the new electricity" for its potential world-changing possibilities. So it's perhaps only natural to ask: What impact will AI have on libraries and the world of literature? Perhaps most obviously, AI machines will soon have the power to take over the role of librarians. They will have the power to become not just the stewards of the world's information and literature, but also trusted mentors, research advisors, and content matter experts.