The first book completely written
by computer was published in 2008, in Russia and was a love story.
Now, Philip M. Parker, Professor of Marketing at INSEAD Business
School, has created a computer system that can write books about
specific subjects in about 20 minutes. The patented algorithm has so
far generated hundreds of thousands of books. Amazon lists over
100,000 books attributed to Parker, and over 700,000 works listed
for his company, ICON Group International, Inc.
Although his work is more of a compiler rather than writer, the end
result is written and published books. The book categories include
specialized technical and business reports, language dictionaries,
rare disease overviews, and crossword puzzle books for learning
foreign languages. They are automatically generated by software.
The system automates this process by building databases of
information to source from, providing an interface to customize a
query about a topic, and creating templates for information to be
packaged.
A US patent was issued in 2007. The invention provides for the
automatic authoring, marketing, and or distributing of title
material. A computer automatically authors material. The material is
automatically formatted into a desired format, resulting in a title
material. The title material may also be automatically distributed
to a recipient. Meta material, marketing material, and control
material are automatically authored and if desired, distributed to a
recipient. Further, the title may be authored on demand, such that
it may be in any desired language and with the latest version and
content.
To avoid copyright infringement, the system is designed to avoid
plagiarism, but the patent aims to create original, but not
necessarily creative works. In other words, if any kind of content
can be broken down into a formula, then the system could package
related, but different content in that same formula.
I looked at a number of the (expensive) books and they follow the
same formula of headline lists followed by scores of reference
sites. The problem is, as with all printed material the content is
static as the world moves on. Think of the books as Google searches
as of a specific date and time.