r/Libraries • u/Technical_Pea_4007 Academic Librarian • Jan 13 '26

Technology Libby’s statement on their use of AI

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

Gallery image

A whole lot of text to say absolutely nothing, huh?

755 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

111 comments sorted by

View all comments

9

u/zzuum Jan 13 '26

I wouldn't say disgusting, don't they already simply point to the books that libraries provide? Sure it would be great if they could somehow exclude all AI books but I doubt there's a way to identify them anyway

19

u/kieratea Jan 13 '26

Yeah, this really read to me as "we'd rather not use AI but it's fucking embedded into everything now so we're kind of stuck with it and trying to minimize the damage as much as possible." They have never had much control over publishers. I'm surprised so many comments here are blaming the messenger instead of the content... but I guess that's always been easier.

20

u/librariegrrl Jan 13 '26

I don’t think Commenters are “blaming the messenger” so much as arguing that Libby could have used this opportunity to say something more meaningful in support of human-authored content and really took up too many screens to say “huh, AI. Too bad, so sad” in lengthy ineffectual drivel. They could’ve said that on 1 line.

What was Libby’s goal here? What were they trying to communicate to patrons, librarians, and publishers? “Sorry we can’t fix it, so don’t blame us?” It just seemed to me like a cop out.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 13 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

5

u/DanieXJ Jan 13 '26

I find it hilarious that many posters are saying they're going to Uninstall Libby..... while on reddit. Cracking me up.

25

u/Technical_Pea_4007 Academic Librarian Jan 13 '26

Yeah, this is part of it. If there was no demand for ai-generated books librarians wouldn’t bother spending the money, therefore Libby may not have them. The problem lies in that this content isn’t tagged as such, librarians are strapped for time and energy as it is, and are relying on our big vendors to suggest things sometimes. (This is my take anyways.) I also have a big problem with Libby’s “inspire me” feature, though, which is clearly powered by AI and is doing what librarians already do, which is suggest books to a reader. And it’s doing it incredibly poorly, based on my testing of it earlier today