Can AI make you love reading the classics? US publishing company Rebind is betting on it

Is the act of reading changing? A few years ago, the publishing industry was convinced that physical books would perish. Some of them also thought that readers would prefer to read on their phones. On platforms like Wattpad, readers engage in real-time conversations directly within the text, their comments a chorus of reactions, interpretations, and inside jokes. Now, there's a whole generation for whom reading is inherently social, a shared adventure through the swipes on their phones.

The next question publishers must confront is not only whether AI can replace writers and editors, but also what it will mean to “read” books in the AI-powered 21st century. One could always do the trite thing of uploading a book onto ChatGPT and “reading” it through the summary that it sputters out. (There’s an actual app for that in case you’re interested. It’s called “Blinkist”).

‘Reading’ classics

A new publishing company in the US thought they could do something different. They wondered, what if you put exactly what AI is mimicking – the human intelligence – back into the picture? Not just any human intelligence, but reputed writers, philosophers, and critics, and not just any books, but the classics.

On Rebind.ai, co-founded by John Dubuque and John Kaag, you can read a classic and ask an AI-version of someone you never thought you’d get the chance to talk to an inane number of questions. Just make sure they’re good ones. John Banville, who wrote The Sea? Check. Roxane Gay, who wrote Bad Feminist? Check. Lena Dunham from the Girls? Check. Taylor Swift? “It turns out, Taylor Swift is rather hard to get hold of,” wryly pointed out Kaag.

Dubuque, a successful businessman, majored in philosophy during his college years. Later in life, after making his fortune selling his plumbing supply company for hundreds of millions of dollars, he struggled to understand Heidegger's Being and Time and hired an Oxford professor for private tutoring. Around the time Dubuque was working through another complex philosophical work (Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality), ChatGPT was released. As was the case with most of us, he talked to the chatbot. He saw an opportunity where many of us saw a threat. Soon after, he contacted John Kaag, Chair and professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a specialist in American philosophy, about the possibility of an AI-powered publishing company.

When you read a book on Rebind, you can do all the things you’re also able to do on your Kindle: marginalia, instant lookups, save notes. “The extra thing that Rebind does is that, if you want to think about the text as you’re reading in a way that still protects your private intellectual space, you also have the opportunity to talk about the text with someone who loves the book as much as you do and happens to be an expert on it,” says Clancy Martin, who, in addition to being a professor of Philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City is a Ghostbinder and Senior Producer at Rebind.

The role of a Ghostbinder is to have a conversation with a Rebinder, the individual who offers original commentary on a piece of literature, which in the case of Rebind’s first collection, is a roster of canonical literature. The Rebinder and the Ghostbinder record twelve hours of conversation, and sometimes even more, which make the commentary that’s the crowning jewel of a Rebind title.

So, when you’re reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, for which Martin is the Rebinder, you can ask him any question you want. “You can’t beat the bot,” observed Martin, noting how attempts to manipulate or trip up the AI system into producing unintended responses were generally futile. “[Rebind’s] guardrails are much more localised around the topic and around the book itself. So, if you ask it a question that is really off-topic, it’ll simply say, ‘Let's move back to the book.’” That wasn’t always the case, however. When I asked bot Martin, ‘If you could be any kitchen appliance, what would you be and why?’ he went on about how he’d choose to be a blender because of how “versatile” and “powerful” they are. But Rebind ensures you don’t think this is Martin for a second. All you have to do is click on a button next to the chat which, through a set of highlights, tells you what was AI-generated and what was part of the original commentary. Just as in a classroom or a discerning book club, irrelevant questions are met with disinterest that’s not immediately obvious.

Asking better questions

It’s almost too easy for a company like this to be conflated with just another gimmick which genuinely believes that literature can be “easy” to read with AI, but that’s exactly what Martin and Kaag hope to avoid. While most people building AI-powered tools are focusing on how the technology can “democratise” the many different kinds of work in the creative industry, Rebind thinks of the word differently.

“Most tech companies are suggesting that AI is going to make life easier or enable people to accomplish tasks in much less time,” said Kaag. “They claim that anyone will be able to write a paper, code, or perform other tasks because AI will lessen the intellectual load on individuals. That’s what AI is supposedly going to allow you to do. Rebind takes a slightly different direction. We’re trying to create a platform that encourages people to ask better questions and allows them to engage with challenging texts in meaningful ways – texts they might never be able to tackle on their own.”

When Kaag uses the word “meaningful”, he doesn't necessarily mean to only read the way that academia has traditionally prescribed – through formal analysis and scholarly interpretation. His approach is to pair books with commentators that can provide “really interesting interpretations.” “Laura Kipnis, who wrote Against Love, has a unique perspective on the subject. So, I ask myself, what’s the book about? In the case of Romeo and Juliet, it’s romantic love. Then, I consider whether a Shakespeare scholar is the best fit, or if a unique take on love, like Kipnis’s, would resonate more with readers.”

For Ulysses, Kaag chose Philip Kitcher. “[Kitcher] has been teaching Ulysses at Columbia [University] for the last 20 years. People who read Ulysses really do need a sort of scholarly apparatus and a scholarly structure to think things through.” An occasional celebrity pairing doesn’t hurt, of course, so they also brought Lena Dunham. “[Dunham] brings her celebrity, acting experience, activism, and literary acumen to bear on this book, but it’s likely that most people who will listen to that Rebind are likely drawn because they’ve watched Girls,” said Kaag, adding that Rebind’s goal is to help influencers “enhance the level of discourse” they have with their followers, jumping out of the stagnation that follows superficial engagement to create more meaningful interactions.

A ‘director’s cut’ experience for readers

In an era where publishers are increasingly turning to social media influencers and bite-sized content to drive book sales, Rebind’s approach seems to insist on a hybrid model that leverages both viral reach and intellectual depth to create genuine literary engagement. The fact that they’re using AI to do it might be counterintuitive though. When I used Rebind AI, its structure of a high-production video that preceded the beginning of the book felt like I was taking a MOOC course.

As I read more and chatted with Martin’s bot version, something eerier emerged – it felt almost as if he was speaking directly to me, responding to my specific questions with an uncanny personal touch. Since AI is used to create vast quantities of “content” – a disparaging word in the literary and publishing world – such as marketing emails, filler illustrations, etc. that nobody finds particularly engaging or desirable, anything having to do with AI is considered to be mass-produced, the word AI becoming a shorthand for describing something that feels unoriginal, derivative, or just plain bad. Martin's bot, though created with AI assistance, doesn't quite fit any of these adjectives.

And how is the publishing world reacting to Rebind? The company is currently in discussions with the three largest publishers in the world to secure contemporary intellectual property and books. Their goal is to feature contemporary authors discussing their works, offering a kind of “director's cut” experience for readers. In a market where the author’s persona is suddenly more important than ever, such an enterprise could significantly boost sales of books, especially those written by authors with substantial followings. While publishers they spoke to recognise Rebind’s potential to boost sales, particularly for backlist titles, they are wary of copyright concerns and how copyrighted material is used in training the AI. “…We’re trying as best we can to assuage those concerns by being very specific about how we're using the books that are in copyright, and then compensating the authors appropriately to provide this additional commentary on the book itself,” said Kaag. “I think publishers have been wary about it.”

Rebind is also developing a book-reading experience comparable to a choose-your-own-adventure story, but significantly more advanced, allowing readers to interact with characters and influence the plot in a non-deterministic way. It's similar to interactive fiction, with sophisticated AI driving the narrative. Kaag described the idea as letting readers “jump into the book as one of the characters,” much like a role-playing video game, and interact with the narrative through “author-directed artificially intelligent dialogue.” Martin expands on this, imagining readers playing the role of Watson in a Sherlock Holmes story, collaborating with an AI-powered Sherlock to solve the mystery.

For now, Rebind plans to launch an à la carte service before transitioning to a Masterclass-style subscription model priced comparably to hardcover books. Authors, or commentators, are compensated through a traditional publishing contract structure, receiving an advance and royalties after recoupment.

While navigating these complex publisher relationships and IP concerns, Rebind is simultaneously grappling with a more fundamental question: how to combat the perception that reading – especially of complex literary works – is becoming increasingly obsolete in our digital age, seen as something arcane and reserved for those educated in stodgy universities, lectured by professors in elbow-patched suits. Reading has become less of an activity and more of a status symbol: an aesthetic of high taste. One rarely clarifies “watching Netflix” as a hobby unless they have a desire to be deemed unrefined. “Reading” is something people feel compelled to specify in their dating profiles and social media bios, especially in an era where the average person would rather scroll through an endless stream of Instagram reels than tackle a challenging novel.

Historically, publishers have relied on bestsellers and popular fiction to subsidise their more literary offerings, but Rebind’s approach suggests a different calculus: they’re banking on an untapped market of readers who aspire to engage with more demanding texts but need better entry points. Rather than simply making literature more “consumable”, they’re creating scaffolding for readers who want to develop their literary understanding. One could argue that Rebind is challenging how academia made canonical literature an elitist endeavour – the assumption that meaningful engagement with these texts requires specific qualifications, a family pedigree of reading, and access to hallowed university libraries.

The notion that a text’s value lies in its exclusivity particularly irks Kaag: “It’s sort of strange to think that Ulysses can only be read by a very small number of people, like that’s what makes it special,” he said. “What we’re doing is taking a secondary source, this commentary, and making it chattable – so you can interact with it to gain insight into the primary source.”

While AI research and AI-powered companies like Rebind promise revolutionary advancements, the current reality is a deluge of mediocre AI-generated content. The question of whether the AI hype is dying is hotly contested, and overlooks the possibility that a more pertinent question is whether its output can move beyond mere adequacy. For now, that’s impossible without human intervention – a reality check that Rebind has embraced.

Martin insists that engaging with AI is essential to understand its potential: “If we’re going to use AI more intelligently then we actually have to work with AI.” He acknowledges the labour-intensive nature of working with AI, specifically “creating those prompts”, and emphasises that “the process stays very human all the way down”. “AI is not great at editing,” Kaag remarked, explaining that his team dedicated significant time to manually proofreading the commentator conversation transcripts to ensure accuracy and clarity, correcting errors the AI frequently missed.

Rebind presents an intriguing, if somewhat idealistic, response to the perceived crisis in reading. While the platform’s premise – leveraging AI to facilitate deeper engagement with classic literature – is promising, its success hinges on a series of ambitious gambles. Can they overcome the inherent scepticism surrounding AI-generated content and convince readers that simulated conversations with expert avatars offer genuine intellectual value? The platform offers a compelling alternative to the prevailing trend of simplified content and fleeting digital interactions, but its ultimate impact remains to be seen. The tools are there, the experts are assembled, the technology is humming. But will people ask the right questions?