In less than a year, the book publisher Bokum has translated and modernized over 800 classic literary works, such as Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist", Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" and fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm.
The website states that the publisher "dusts off the treasure of literature and gives old masterpieces a modern, fluent language". This is done, according to an article on the website, by using works where the copyright has expired.
The book covers look and have been accused from several quarters of being AI-generated. The editors or translators are said to be named, among others, "Sebastian Swedland", "Charles Petterberg" and "Zophie Zilverzand" - names that cannot be linked to people in public records or to people who were active at other publishers. They must have translated 183, 106 and 21 works respectively in less than a year.
Several authors and translators have reacted to the publisher, which Dagens ETC also reported on. One of them is the writer Sara Bergmark Elfgren, who thinks it is startling.
- It is a distortion of these writings. People who have lived, written, acted and put their words on paper. It is directly offensive, even if there is no copyright, she says.
The publishing house Bokum has its titles with major retailers such as Storytel, Bookbeat and Adlibris. Sara Bergmark Elfgren thinks that is the biggest problem.
- It's really a sign that the commercial, serious players in the book market have to wake up and start monitoring this and protect consumers against the AI rubbish, she says.
The publisher not only publishes translations from other languages, but has also "modernized" Swedish works by, among others, August Strindberg and Karin Boye. In a new version of Strindberg's short story "An Unwelcome", by Bokum with the title "Den unönskade sonen", the word "church people" is replaced by "churchgoers" and the structure of the sentence has been reversed.
Another example is Karin Boye's short story ”Det äjärnar saken”, which in its new language has been given the title ”Jag ska dö”, with a cover image of a woman lying asleep, seemingly on her deathbed.
Children's book author Emi Gunér drew attention to this through a post on Instagram.
- I think it's so disgusting, that just because the copyright has expired, you can do anything. It is so historyless, she says.
In the joint catalog of the Swedish libraries, Libris, there are over 840 titles published by Bokum förlag. The first was published last December. Names such as "Charles Petterberg" are listed as translators.
This is criticized by Andreas Vesterlund, who is himself a translator and board member of the translators' section within the Swedish Writers' Association.
- They make it appear that there are human authors behind something that has been run through a generative AI machine. It will be bad language. These machines cannot translate, says Andreas Vesterlund.
According to Unn Edberg, head of collection and metadata at the Royal Library, the information about e-books comes to Libris through automated machine flows.
But people react to the fact that people who don't seem to exist have been listed as translators.
- When we have been alerted to inaccuracies, we make remarks about it in Libris. Right now we are looking at this case, says Unn Edberg.
On the publisher's contact page there is only a general email address, and no contact persons. The website was registered at the end of October last year. DN has emailed the publisher.
When DN contacts the retailers on Friday, Bookbeat replies that they have unpublished the books in question, and that they have been reviewing how they can make a more active selection of books for some time now.
Storytel states that they will take down the titles, as they violate their AI markup guidelines.
Adlibris says that their general stance is not to automatically stop AI-generated content, but that in this case they will initiate a special review of the publisher and the titles concerned.
DN has applied for Bokum.
