Can the Rebind AI app save literature?
Some renowned authors think it can, and they want to help
Last winter, I took it upon myself to read The Gulag Archipelago, the 472-page tome by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn that profoundly describes what it’s like to be a Soviet prisoner in Stalin’s forced labour camps. I’d always wanted to read it—and the time had come. I’d also been experimenting with the voice-response function on my ChatGPT phone app, and started asking it questions to help clarify historical contexts:
What were Cossaks all about?
Why did Russia withdraw from WWI?
Did Germany conquer Moscow during WWII?
What’s a Black Mariah?
While it did provide historical information and definitions for me, ChatGPT stopped short of conversing about the deeper feelings Solzhenitsyn was stirring in my soul:
Are the depths of human emotion limitless?
What’s the sound of a human spirit breaking?
Is light just what darkness looks like underneath?
For that type of intellectual and spiritual parlance, I wouldn’t want a large language model just scraping the vast utilitarian internet, I’d need more of an educated, enlightened spirit guide, who’s also in tune with what intrigues my unique soul.
That’s why I’m curious about Rebind and why I joined their beta waitlist. The service has enlisted prominent literary figures they call “Rebinders”, who are matched to a book relevant to their own genre, including classics like The Great Gatsby, Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Metamorphosis. They record original commentary, which is then used as source material for artificial intelligence to generate customized responses to your questions. Because the AI is always learning, over time it comes to personalize its responses based on your intellectual and spiritual proclivities.
Ordinarily, I’d pan this as just another hype app, on par with scam AI books crowding Amazon, until I saw that Rebind has enlisted renowned, award-winning literary critics and authors like Deepak Chopra, Roxane Gay, and dear-to-my heart-and-home: Margaret Atwood, who will be “rebinding” A Tale of Two Cities in February 2025.
While those names caught my attention, the reverence for the comprehension experience drew me in to Rebind’s philosophy. Co-founders John Kaag and Clancy Martin describe connecting to a great book and absorbing the richness of each and every word. To them, the act of reading words on paper can be transcendent:
“When you read deeper, ask questions, and write down your own thoughts, a book will be written on your heart for the rest of your life.”
Personally, I’d be tickled to read Dickens while conversing with the Margaret Atwood about our comparative thoughts and feelings, reflecting on love and sacrifice during the French Revolution against my life as resilient single mom in present-day Toronto.
Their list of books is growing, and although The Gulag Archipelago is not on the list yet, Pride and Prejudice rebound by Sadie Stein and Huckleberry Finn rebound by Marlon James are on my list to explore. With so much justifiable trepidation around AI’s impact on the writing industry, Rebind’s use of AI to honour and preserve classic literature—and facilitate our appreciation of reading these quintessential texts with personalized analysis—seems like a worthwhile exploration.