"Hearing this, Calypso trembled with rage. 'I'm so pissed!'"
This is a passage from a book by a Korean publisher that used artificial intelligence (AI) to translate the ancient Greek epic "The Odyssey." As internet slang such as "I'm so pissed" as well as "Not my business" and "So what" appeared in the work depicting the trials of Odysseus, a hero of the Trojan War, critics said it damaged the dignity of the classics.
As AI publishing spreads, debate over quality is growing. Readers are calling for the removal of "unverified, low-quality AI books" from the market. The publishing industry counters that "it is an inevitable trend in terms of efficiency, such as expense reduction, and the core issue is not technology but editing and review."
◇Quality controversy amid surge in AI publishing… legal deposit system also in dispute
According to the publishing industry on the 4th, the number of publishers cranking out "mass-produced" books using AI is surging. Publisher Luminary Books has poured out as many as 9,000 e-books a year using AI. The titles range from economics books like "Basic candlestick charts for stock investing" to social and science books such as "Life science for teens" and "Niccolò Machiavelli aphorisms."
Authors are listed as "Luminary Books educational publishing editing team," "Luminary Books finance publishing editing team," and the like. The product information section also specifies that the books were produced using AI.
Not only Luminary Books, but seven publishers explicitly state that they use AI. The industry believes the actual number is far higher if you include those that use AI as an auxiliary tool or use it without disclosing it.
The problem is that the quality of AI books falls short of readers' expectations. The most controversial translation of The Odyssey is riddled with slang such as "Seubuljae, a Korean shorthand, meaning a "self-inflicted disaster"" and "What on earth 129" (meaning "what's going on"). From the preface, there are also awkward, ungrammatical sentences such as "In the new-edition preface published simultaneously with the new edition of this translation, I partially explained the background of the two books' birth."
Some suspect that mass-produced AI publishing is a means to exploit the "legal deposit system." The National Assembly Library and the National Library of Korea are required by law to collect books published domestically, and in this process they pay publishers the list price of a copy. The National Library of Korea last year decided to exclude 395 e-books submitted for legal deposit by Luminary Books.
Publishers under fire said they were being treated unfairly. The head of the publisher that released the Odyssey translation, addressing the quality controversy, said, "We only used AI in the translation process, and the book was published after human review," adding, "We intentionally included slang to narrow the generational gap." The person also argued, "That book had limits in quality because it used an older AI version, but books using the latest version are almost indistinguishable in quality from human translations."
Luminary Books also said in a statement on the 2nd, "We have never received even 1 won in compensation through legal deposit," and "We applied for legal deposit for only some titles out of concern for potential disadvantages if we failed to fulfill the deposit obligation." It added that it has not applied for legal deposit since September last year.
◇'Desperate measure' amid crisis in publishing… need for guidelines
Some say that using AI is unavoidable as the publishing market shrinks. The combined annual sales of 71 publishers that disclose audit reports via the Financial Supervisory Service's Data Analysis, Retrieval and Transfer System (DART) totaled 4.8911 trillion won in 2024. That is down by nearly 500 billion won from 5.3836 trillion won five years ago. The consensus is that conditions are even worse for small publishers.
In this situation, assigning a translation to a person costs at least 2 million to 3 million won per book. By contrast, with AI, an annual subscription fee of only tens of thousands of won is enough.
AI is also used as a channel to diversify revenue. Under Korean law, works can be published freely regardless of copyright 70 years after the author's death, so classical literature by long-deceased authors has become a main target for AI translations. The publisher that released the controversial Odyssey had previously focused on academic titles.
With AI publishing already entrenched across the market—so much so that author Hwang Seok-young said the writer used ChatGPT for a recent release—quality control is expected to become more important.
Lee Byung-hoon, a sociology professor at Chung-Ang University, said, "Regardless of preferences, the number of works such as plays and novels that use AI will likely increase," adding, "Introducing a norm requiring content producers to disclose how much they used AI could be one option."