PEAK DYSTOPIA

An Iowa School District Used ChatGPT to Find Books to Ban

The chatbot has been used to help ban 19 books from Mason City school libraries.

In a chilling turn of events you’d expect from a dystopian sci-fi hellscape, an Iowa school district has used the AI chatbot ChatGPT to identify books to remove from its shelves in order to comply with a statewide book ban. The Mason City Community School District has removed 19 books from its libraries ahead of the upcoming school year in order to comply with a recent book ban signed into law by Gov. Kim Reynolds on May 26. The law requires Iowa school library books to be “age appropriate” and without “descriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.” Bridgette Exman, Mason City’s Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction, told PopSci that the school district compiled a list of books frequently banned for sexual content and then asked ChatGPT, “Does [book] contain a description or depiction of a sex act?” If the chatbot answered yes, then “the book will be removed from circulation and stored,” Exman said. Disconcertingly, ChatGPT gave PopSci different answers when its reporter asked it the same questions using the 19 removed book titles—underscoring the inherent issues of using an experimental chatbot to make book banning decisions for you.