Generative AI and Ancient History Magazine
So, this is a bit more of a serious topic for the blog today — generative AI.
To be totally frank, I avoid using generative AI in my personal life as much as possible. If I have used generative AI, it has been because I did not know I was using it.
However, given my position as Editor of Ancient History, I need to not let my own personal opinion cloud my judgement when it comes to considering the use of generative AI in the magazine. After all, it could be incredibly helpful. So, I thought about it. I ignored the environmental, social, and political implications of using generative AI — the issues which drive my own Luddite attitude towards it — and assessed it purely on its impact on the magazine.
It is safe to say that we will not be using generative AI in the magazines at all, whether internally or from our contributors.
Firstly, the illustrations. One thing that we at Karwansaray Publishers are proud of is the artwork we include in each issue of the magazine. We believe that well-made illustrations can really bring the ancient world to life — just look at how influential the works of painters like Lawrence Alma-Tadema continue to be. Simply put, AI-generated art lacks the warmth and texture of art made by real people, whether traditionally or digitally. Moreover, we are incredibly proud of the artists who make the illustrations for us. I believe that, in using generative AI, we are stealing from hard-working, independent artists — not only their commissions, but also the very fact that generative AI scans the work of human artists to generate its own images. So, in terms of standards, we will not be using AI-generated artworks in Ancient History.
Secondly, the articles. As editor of Ancient History, I have made every effort to reach out to academic experts in each of the topics we cover in the magazine to ensure that we are giving you the most up-to-date theories and interpretations (and, similarly, non-academic contributors need to show the resources they are working from). Using generative AI to create articles undermines this core part of my editorial philosophy. It has been repeatedly shown that generative AI frequently hallucinates when asked about history, whether in the text it provides or the sources it cites. I am not an expert in every single topic we include in the magazine — no one person can be. Part of the reason I approach experts is that I can trust them to work from up-to-date, reliable material. If we were to use generative AI, I would need to fact check everything it produced for us, which would take up too much time, otherwise the magazine would soon be full of historical inaccuracies and even outright falsehoods. What's more, the 'voice' of AI-generated writing is invariably monotonous. Were we to use AI-generated articles in the magazine, we would lose the diversity of style that human authors bring to their articles, instead adopting monotonous AI-speak, and the magazine's quality would suffer for it.
From a purely production perspective, then, the use of generative AI would decrease the quality of the magazines. Couple this with the environmental, social, and political implications, and I think there is no argument for the use of generative AI.
