It’s McLiterature.
A newly-launched iPhone and iPad artificial intelligence app is abbreviating iconic literary works like “Moby Dick” and “A Tale of Two Cities” — while whitewashing classics like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”
Magibook‘s website claims it utilizes artificial intelligence to simplify the language of books like “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “Crime and Punishment,” making them more accessible to all readers, “no matter your English level.”
Ultimately, though, the app strips away the potency of the original writings, and the emotions their author’s were attempting to convey with their prose.
Seminal lines such as “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times” are reduced to “It was a time when things were very good and very bad.”
The 219 now-controversial occurrences of the N-word in “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” are replaced on Magibook with the noun “Helper.”
At this point, users of the free app, which launched July 1, can access five different versions of 10 classic books, including “Dracula,” “Robinson Crusoe,” “The Three Musketeers,” “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” and “The Great Gatsby” — from their original versions down to an “elementary version.”
Cassandra Jacobs, a linguistics professor at the University of Buffalo, called the new app “alarming,” noting exposure to complicated text “makes us smarter.”
She also noted authors chose specific words “very deliberately” when they write, and believes ideas will get lost via AI.
“There might be some discrepancies when a whole book is ingested and an abridged version’s spit out, and could give people a different idea about what these stories are about,” she said.
The app says it was created to “democratize books and their ideas,” and is suggested for “English learners,” children, parents, teachers and people with dyslexia and severe ADHD.
The app’s developer, Louis Gachot, couldn’t be reached for comment.
