AI is being used to identify books to remove from libraries in the US state of Iowa.
Nineteen books have been pulled off school library shelves ahead of the 2023/2024 school year, according to a report by Globe Gazette.
These include school syllabus staples such as Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.
Why? According to Iowa’s Senate File 496, school library books should be “age-appropriate”, which precludes “any material with descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act”.
As per the Iowa sex abuse document used to judge the limits of this definition, this includes “touching one’s own genitalia or anus with a finger,” at the direction of someone else.
“Our classroom and school libraries have vast collections, consisting of texts purchased, donated, and found,” says Mason City Community School District assistant superintendent Bridgette Exman.
“It is simply not feasible to read every book and filter for these new requirements. Therefore, we are using what we believe is a defensible process to identify books that should be removed from collections at the start of the ’23-’24 school year.”
How is AI used to ban books?
Software is a sensible way to check through a large amount of text in ebook versions of works available through libraries, perhaps searching for a range of keywords, which can then be checked manually by a school board member.
However, Exman confirmed to Popsci that chatbot ChatGPT was used in this case to identify books with unsuitable content.
Using the research preview of ChatGPT currently available online, the chatbot suggests a handful of the 19 books removed from libraries do not contain “explicit sexual content” or “explicit sex scenes”.
It is also unable to recreate the scenes in books that are flagged as containing sexual content, or identify page numbers or chapters in which it is found. ChatGPT alone is not a good tool for arbiters of the contents of school libraries.
“Lists of commonly challenged books were compiled from several sources to create a master list of books that should be reviewed,” according to a school district statement.
“The books on this master list were filtered for challenges related to sexual content. Each of these texts was reviewed using AI software to determine if it contains a depiction of a sex act.”
The books were part of grades seven to 12, covering ages from 12 to 18. Here’s the full list of books currently removed pending further review:
- The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, by Sherman Alexie
- I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou
- Thirteen Reasons Why, by Jay Asher
- The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
- Feed, by M T Anderson
- Friday Night Lights, by Buzz Bissinger
- An American Tragedy, by Theodore Dreiser
- Killing Mr Griffin, by Lois Duncan
- Looking for Alaska, by John Green
- The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
- Crank, by Ellen Hopkins
- Tricks, by Ellen Hopkins
- Monday’s Not Coming, by Tiffany D Jackson
- A Court of Mist and Fury (series), by Sarah J Maas
- Sold, by Patricia McCormick
- Beloved, by Toni Morrison
- Nineteen Minutes, by Jodi Picoult
- The Color Purple, by Alice Walker
- Gossip Girl, by Cecily von Ziegesar
