How Are Artificial Intelligence, Big Data and Machine Learning Used in Publishing as of Today? > Publishers’ Forum on May 9 & 10, 2019. Early Bird until Feb 28.

Is artificial intelligence coming? That’s the wrong question. Because there are already countless – often unnoticed – examples for the use of AI. On 9 and 10 May in Berlin, the Publishers’ Forum will present two approaches to this mega-trend – Early Bird rates available until Feb 2019.

Discussion points include:

• Which questions and problem areas can the use of AI already provide solutions for that are suitable for everyday use?
• Which practical examples in the publishing industry demonstrate how we can already benefit from the use of AI here and now?

AI has a broad spectrum of potential applications across the areas of creation, discovery (and management) of talent, review of specialist content, and the provision of complex interfaces between content/rights owners and end consumers. Hear about exciting examples of all these scenarios:

• Creation: Why did computer giant IBM acquire a creative agency? And what does this step have to do with Watson, one of the world’s leading AI suites? David Linderman, currently Executive Creative Director at Aperto, has been heading up projects at the intersection of AI technology and design for 10 years. After stints in London and New York, he is now back in Berlin, where he will impart an overview of the broad palette of potential applications for AI and their design requirements.
• Talent discovery: Not merely thousands, but millions of texts are submitted to author platforms like Wattpad every month. Only by means of AI is it possible to find the proverbial “needle in the haystack” with the potential for development and exploitation as a book, film, TV series, or game. Ashleigh Gardner will be reliant on these discoveries to scale up the newly founded book publishing division of Wattpad.
• Content review: In specialist and academic publishing, manuscripts must be checked not just for linguistic accuracy, but also – by means of comparison with thousands of published texts – for factual inaccuracies or contradictions. This is precisely what the software from Danish startup Unsilo does, as co-founder Mads Rydahl will show at the Forum.
• Customer interfaces: With SciGraph, academic publisher SpringerNature has already been using AI for years to link its thousands of articles thematically, thereby improving discoverability, as Henning Schönenberger can report. But end consumers who pose a “Gute Frage” (good question) or consult the “Netdoktor” on Holtzbrinck’s digital portals also receive assistance via AI. These are tricky undertakings, as Miriam Rosin knows, because there is hardly any room for error when, for example, an AI bot helps provide answers.