Libby App to Introduce AI Content Filters
The popular library e-book app Libby will soon allow users to filter out AI-generated content, including AI-written books, narrated audiobooks, machine translations, and AI art.
OverDrive, the company behind the widely used library e-book lending app Libby, is preparing to launch new artificial intelligence (AI) content controls. New CEO Marc DeBevoise announced that readers will be able to choose in the app’s settings whether to see AI-generated content, including AI authorship, AI-narrated audiobooks, machine translation, and AI-generated art.
OverDrive aims to strike a balance between allowing readers and librarians to opt out of AI content while embracing its potential benefits in areas like content recommendations and localization. DeBevoise argues that AI can ultimately help lower barriers to information access, particularly for localizing audiobooks into multiple languages, which would be cost-prohibitive with human narrators.
Libby’s catalog includes over 6 million books, which have been borrowed more than a billion times. The majority of these titles were published before 2020 or 2022 and are therefore not AI-generated. However, self-published books from intermediaries like Draft to Digital may include AI content if they have undergone extensive human editing. OverDrive decided against using AI checkers and instead relies on publishers self-labeling their works via standardized metadata.
Audiobooks, though only 15% of Libby’s catalog, now account for roughly half of all app usage. DeBevoise still prefers human-narrated audiobooks but sees machine translation as a cost-effective way to expand into dozens or hundreds of languages. Critics note that AI translation of literary works can be problematic, and the filters will only work if books are correctly labeled.
This move comes as the digital publishing industry faces a wave of AI-generated books. Amazon restricted self-published uploads in 2023 to combat AI slop, and Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn recently said that Kobo rejects nearly half of all self-published books over AI concerns. OverDrive does not allow direct author uploads but works with Draft to Digital, which supplies books to most digital storefronts.
