It’s McLiterature.
A newly released artificial intelligence app for iPhone and iPad shortens iconic literary works like “Moby Dick” and “A Tale of Two Cities,” and glosses over classics like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Magic BookThe website claims that it uses artificial intelligence to simplify the language in books like “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Crime and Punishment,” making them accessible to all readers “regardless of their English level.”
But ultimately, the app takes away the power of the original text and the emotion the author was trying to convey with it.
Key lines such as “It was the best of times and it was the worst of times” are summed up as “It was a time when things were very good and a time when things were very bad.”
The 219 controversial occurrences of the N-word in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have been replaced with the noun “helper” in Magic Book.
Currently, users of the free app, which was released on July 1, have access to five different versions of 10 classic works, ranging from the original to an “elementary” version, including “Dracula,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Three Musketeers,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and “The Great Gatsby.”
Cassandra Jacobs, a linguistics professor at the University at Buffalo, called the new app “alarming” and noted that exposure to complex text “makes us smarter.”
She also said that authors choose specific words “very carefully” when writing, and that they believe ideas will be lost due to AI.
“If you read the whole book versus regurgitating an abridged version, there could be inconsistencies and it could give people a different impression of what these stories are about,” she said.
The app is said to have been created “to democratize books and ideas” and is recommended for “English language learners,” children, parents, teachers, and those with dyslexia and severe ADHD.
We reached out to app developer Louis Gachot for comment but were unable to get in touch.
