The role of generative AI in my book

When I started my summer break in late June, I had promised to be back in October. Well, done by the very end of the month! It has taken so long for two reasons: First, I have written and finished the first two (of about ten to twelve) chapters and am happy with the outcome. Very subjective, I know.

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In order to get a better understanding about these writing sessions, you may have a look at my video on ‘A day in the life of a writer’. The second reason for my lengthy period of laziness, however, is more objective: I have undertaken intensive research on AI in journalism, because I need it for my (fictional) media platform, the CityView.

Why? Well, in reality many people just do not want to listen to the Trumpian ‘shit’ anymore. This is not my language, but Steve Bannon’s, who had said that the Trump gang intends ‘to flood the media zone with shit’ – hammering out multiple fakes every single day. By flooding so, the Trump administration make people tired. They are not attentive enough to follow the plan under the ‘shit’. And the media are mainly reporting the news, but do not give views, no perspectives.

Media need generative artificial intelligence, so called GenAI, to dig under the ‘dirty Trumpian fake news plan’. It is much more than a flood. It is a Trumpian Tsunami of ‘shit’. Just look the AI generated video of ‘King Trump’ in a fighter plane with Top Gun music: It is ‘real shit’ that he drops on the millions of demonstrators against him. You would not dare to create such a scenery even in a fictional plot. In reality, it was posted on Trump’s Social Media channel: Truth Social!

Though my books are fiction, I try to inject seeds of reality into my plots. Aspects that are not completely out of mind, i.e. have aspects of human intelligence. So, let me therefore introduce ‘Geny View’ to you – Geny from GenAI and View from City View. Geny View is an embodied GAI, which works with my journalists and namely with Carla Bell at the City View. Geny View has been introduced into the first two chapters and will ‘work’ with Carla.

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How did I get it done to create ‘her’? The real future of GenAI is to embody and let them run around on legs in robot ‘bodies’. And that is Geny! ‘Embodied AI’ is something that the smartest brains in academic AI research are working on. In July, I discussed that with my friend and esteemed HSG-colleague Prof. Dr.  Damian Borth, who explained to me that GenAI can only learn (more), when it can walk around, ‘breath’, ‘talk’ and any else, what one does in real life.

But it took me some time shape ‘her’ in the plot (have a look at ‘her’), because the GenAI is one thing, but GenAI in journalism is another thing: In order to understand the role of AI in journalisms even better, I went to visit in reality the Chief Digital Officer of BILD-Zeitung, Daniel Böcking, in August and discussed with him, what might happen in the future with AI in journalism. It was, by the way, the day, when I produced my video. 

Finally, for the first newsletter after the summer break, let me refer to an evening with friends in Southern France, where we listened to old ‘partisan songs’. Songs, which gave the partisans the courage to fight the enemy behind the lines. Well, that has been the trigger for me to create a group of digital partisans, who will fight a behind the lines cyber war against the big plan.

So, stay tuned – once a month from now on, because I need to write. 😉

All the best,

Markus A. Will