Homo Extensus: Here's the AI-Book Written by Humans and Powered by AI

It's called Homo Extensus and represents a new frontier in the publishing world: it's a book written not by artificial intelligence models but by humans, and enhanced by AI.

The authors, Gualtiero and Roberto Carraro, with many years of experience in electronic publishing dating back to the days of CD-ROMs and 11 international awards in digital culture, are once again innovating with a new publishing format: the AI-Book. But how did the project come about? "It's two separate ideas that converge in the AI-Book Homo Extensus: the first idea concerns the book's message, an original and constructive vision of the evolution of human intelligence in interaction with artificial intelligence," explains Gualtiero Carraro, author and CEO of Carraro LAB, and continues, "The second idea concerns the medium, the AI-book, designed to enhance—not replace—author-written content with AI. So in this case, McLuhan's motto was applied: The medium is the message."

Available freely on the official website, this format, unlike traditional paperbacks or simple e-books, offers an innovative and interactive reading experience featuring an adaptive index that can tailor itself to the reader's profile, thus offering content tailored to the user's target audience.

Also noteworthy is the activity of the dIAlogos agent, which, thanks to conversational, textual, and vocal functions, allows the reader to engage with the book itself, which in turn assumes the role of the author, making the consultation even more unique. Obviously, there were many obstacles in making this idea a reality, the author explains: "There were several challenges. The first was ensuring that the responses of the conversational agent, which we called dIAlogos, were consistent with the ideas expressed by the authors. We believe this goal was substantially achieved through adequate data ingestion and a fairly detailed system prompt. The second challenge was designing a user interface and imagining a user experience relevant to the functionality of the AI-Book, and we hope we've at least partially succeeded."

And while artificial intelligence could lead to a decline in interest and motivation for writing and creativity, even risking mental atrophy, the authors explain, it also offers the opportunity for a cultural evolutionary leap. Nevertheless, the application of conversational reading could potentially extend to different contexts in the future: "I think the AI-book platform will allow us to develop interesting editorial formats, for example, in textbook publishing and technical manuals: AI mediation allows us to personalize reading for different audiences, while still maintaining the authors' content essentially accurate. The advantage of simultaneous multilingual translation should also be considered," concludes Carraro.