Libby will filter out AI content, kind of

This is Lowpass by Janko Roettgers , a newsletter on the ever-evolving intersection of tech and entertainment, syndicated just for The Verge subscribers once a week. “AI is the new frontier for us,” says Marc DeBevoise, who took over as the new CEO of OverDrive last week. OverDrive is best known for the ebook lending app Libby that is available through tens of thousands of public libraries. Like the rest of the digital publishing industry, it’s poised to face massive disruption from a huge wave of AI-generated books. To prepare for the AI onslaught, Libby is now getting ready to introduce AI content controls, allowing readers to select in the app’s settings whether they want to see AI-generated content or not. This includes not only AI authorship, but also AI-narrated audiobooks, machine translation, and AI-generated art. “We need to tell people what’s available [and] how it was created,” DeBevoise says. With the app’s new AI filters, OverDrive tries to strike a middle ground between allowing readers and librarians to opt out of AI and embracing what DeBevoise thinks are the technology’s upsides in areas like content recommendations and localization. (Libby first introduced some AI features of its own last year to help with book discovery, and subsequently faced some backlash. ) Future AI filter options in Libby. Image: Libby “AI is going to add some benefits,” DeBevoise argues. …