Boucher, a Canadian-born American tech insider and author, has secured a 121-book publishing deal using AI. The series, titled “The Quatria Conspiracy,” will be published by Typophilia.
The publishing business Typophilia has chosen to publish Tim Boucher’s complete book catalog in print in France. Boucher is a controversial AI “author” who utilized AI to help him write and illustrate more than a hundred science fiction novels in a single year.
Boucher, a Canadian-born American tech insider, claims that his dystopian science fiction and fantasy novels employ artificial intelligence as a means of criticizing both the technology itself and the AI sector as a whole. A French AI named Mistral helped write a number of the series’ more recent volumes, showcasing France’s rise to prominence in the AI world and illustrating the possibilities of fusing human creativity with cutting-edge technology. However, authors and readers who fiercely oppose the use of AI in bookmaking have previously unleashed their online firestorm of criticism on Boucher’s work. The use of copyrighted data to train the AI models that produce works like Boucher’s has also drawn criticism.
World-building (or what he terms “lorecore”) is a major theme in his writings, although mainstream media and traditional literary journals have derided them as “terrible” and “self-indulgent day-dreaming.” Nevertheless, despite this, the recently established modest French publishing house Typophilia begs to differ from the reviewers, viewing Boucher’s genre-bending literary experiments as valuable, even artistically meriting them.
Located in the south of France in the ancient Pézenas, the site of Molière’s theater, Typophilia is embracing the use of AI in the arts rather than ignoring it as many others in the field are doing. According to the publisher, AI represents a new stage in the development of human artistic expression, and Boucher’s creations are at the forefront of this trend. Typophilia is using what it refers to as “organic intelligence” and human ingenuity to bring Boucher’s distinct storytelling vision to life for French audiences worldwide in print editions for the first time. Previously only available as ebooks.
Emmanuel Doridot, director of Typophilia, describes how artificial intelligence fits into the company’s artistic vision:
“Typophilia is an avant-garde publishing house that defends an inclusive, stimulating and creative vision of literature, drawing on the power of words to question the world, and open up new perspectives. We are re-defining the boundaries of language and expression, placing creativity and innovation at the heart of all our projects, including using AI to explore new literary territories.”
The first book in Boucher’s series, “The Quatria Conspiracy,” will be released in tandem with the opening of Typophilia’s new direct-to-consumer online store, which will sell hybrid works—what he refers to as collaborations with AI—as well as traditionally written books by French speculative fiction authors. The first volume claims that it has AI-generated “evidence” for a vanished civilization that has been mythologized and is said to have been found in Antarctica. Further details are provided in later volumes. Using the literary device of the unreliable narrator, he tells readers that his stories contain AI-generated components, but leaves it up to them to figure out which is which in a surreal game of cat and mouse.
Regarding his decision to publish his AI books in print first in France, Boucher stated:
“France has such a profound love for books, literature, and the arts, all deeply interwoven in its rich history and culture. It is the perfect setting and spirit for thoughtful conversations about integrating—or refusing—new technologies such as AI in our lives and human creativity.”
Under the series name “Les Livres Mobiles” (Mobile volumes), Typophilia is releasing Boucher’s AI lore volumes in A6 format, which is roughly the size of a cell phone. They will retail for about the same as a cup of coffee and be accessible in kiosks and tiny bookshops all throughout France in addition to the publisher’s website, Typophilia.fr. They are reminiscent of pulp serials. Interestingly, Amazon will not carry these.
Thematically, Boucher questions accepted ideas of authorship and narrative coherence and blur the distinctions between human and machine, as well as between fact and fiction. His in-depth analysis of society’s over-reliance on technology is informed by his experience in content moderation, disinformation, and tech policy. He lives on a tiny willow farm in Quebec, Canada, where he engages in green woodworking and basketry.
Last year, GreatGameIndia reported about the same Tim Boucher, an author who has written over 100 novels in less than a year using ChatGPT. These novels were created with the assistance of ChatGPT and have managed to sell over 500 copies.
