A new way to find material for an LV project using AI

[williamjones]

Below is a list of books given by the new the new AI chatbots: ChatGPT, Bing AI, Jaser.AI, and Copy.AI, etc.
These ChatBots "Know" about public domain, so they can be used to find titles and authors using an AI prompt.

The prompts I used with ChatGPT were of this type:
"Give me a list of 20 books in the public domain that are about birds."

I used several variations of this prompt with the various AI utilities.

After getting a group of results, I visually scanned the book blurbs in the responses and then looked up interesting titles in Gutenberg, Internet Archive and Hathi Trust.
We cannot trust the AI agents completely. There were several of these Public Domain books with publications dates in the 1950s and even later.
I stitched the results together and then tried to weed out the duplicates. I might have missed a few duplicates.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

If anyone is interested in how to use ChatGPT, Bing AI, etc., they can PM me and I'll explain more about this new and very useful way of finding PD possibilities.

List of PD books about birds:
Bird PD books
=============

Extinct Birds by Baron Lionel Walter Rothschild Rothschild

Birds of Prey by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. This is a Victorian novel about a con man and his schemes.

The Birds of Prey of Minnesota by Thomas Sadler Roberts. This is a scientific report on the distribution, habits and status of raptors in Minnesota.

The Birds of Prey: A Practical Handbook by William B. Osgood Field. This is a guide for birdwatchers and naturalists on how to identify and observe raptors.
The Book of Eagles by John A. Livingston. This is a book about the natural history, ecology and culture of eagles around the world.

A Falconry Manual by Frank L. Beebe. This is a manual for falconers on how to train and care for their birds of prey.
The Peregrine Falcon by Derek Ratcliffe. This is a comprehensive study of the biology, ecology and conservation of the peregrine falcon, one of the fastest animals on earth.

Owls: Their Life and Behavior by Julius Ruffing[12]. This is a book about the nocturnal habits, adaptations and diversity of owls.

Vultures: Their Evolution, Ecology & Conservation by Michael O’Neal Campbell[13]. This is a book about the evolution, ecology and conservation of vultures, nature’s scavengers.

Eagles: Masters Of The Sky by Candace Savage[14]. This is a book about the behavior, intelligence and majesty of eagles.

Birds of Prey** by Mary Elizabeth Braddon. This is a Victorian novel about a con man and his schemes. -

**The Birds of Prey: A Practical Handbook** by William B. Osgood Field. This is a guide for birdwatchers and naturalists on how to identify and observe raptors. -

**The Book of Eagles** by John A. Livingston. This is a book about the natural history, ecology and culture of eagles around the world.

**Hawks Aloft: The Story of Hawk Mountain** by Maurice Broun. This is a book about the conservation efforts at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania, where thousands of migrating raptors can be seen every year.

**A Falconry Manual** by Frank L. Beebe. This is a manual for falconers on how to train and care for their birds of prey. -

**The Peregrine Falcon** by Derek Ratcliffe. This is a comprehensive study of the biology, ecology and conservation of the peregrine falcon, one of the fastest animals on earth. -

**Owls: Their Life and Behavior** by Julius Ruffing. This is a book about the nocturnal habits, adaptations and diversity of owls. -

**Vultures: Their Evolution, Ecology & Conservation** by Michael O'Neal Campbell. This is a book about the evolution, ecology and conservation of vultures, nature's scavengers. -

**Eagles: Masters Of The Sky** by Candace Savage. This is a book about the behavior, intelligence and majesty of eagles.

Birds Of Prey Of The World: A Coloured Guide To Identification Of All Diurnal Species (Their Status And Distribution) by Leslie H. Brown. This is a guide to all 313 species of diurnal raptors in the world, with color illustrations and maps.

Raptor! A Kid’s Guide To Birds Of Prey by Christyna M. Laubach[18]. This is a book for children that introduces them to different types of raptors, their characteristics and habitats.

Raptor Research And Management Techniques Manual (Second Edition) edited by David M. Bird. This is a manual for researchers and managers who work with raptors, covering topics such as capture methods, banding techniques, telemetry systems, population monitoring and conservation strategies.

**Hawks In Flight: The Flight Identification Of North American Migrant Raptors** by Pete Dunne. This is a book that helps birders identify raptors in flight using shape, size, color and behavior cues.

**The Goshawk** by T.H. White. This is a memoir of the author's attempt to train a wild goshawk using medieval methods.

**Raptor! A Kid's Guide To Birds Of Prey** by Christyna M. Laubach. This is a book for children that introduces them to different types of raptors, their characteristics and habitats. -

**Raptor Research And Management Techniques Manual (Second Edition)** edited by David M. Bird. This is a manual for researchers and managers who work with raptors, covering topics such as capture methods, banding techniques, telemetry systems, population monitoring and conservation strategies.


Here are some books in the public domain that are about birds of prey:

On The Wing: To The Edge Of The Earth With The Peregrine Falcon by Alan Tennant. This is a book that recounts the author’s journey across America with a peregrine falcon named George V., tracking its migration route using radio signals.

H Is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald[21]. This book tells the story of how the author trained a goshawk named Mabel after her father’s death, exploring themes such as grief, nature and history.

The Golden Eagle (Second Edition) edited by Jeff Watson[22]. This is an updated edition of the definitive monograph on one of Britain’s most iconic birds of prey , the golden eagle , covering its biology, ecology , status and management .


Samples of the form of other profitable AI Prompts are:

Give a list of books in the public domain which are ....
-- about birds
-- fiction about birds
-- children's books about pet birds
-- about ancient/mythical/imaginary birds
-- birds found in Antarctica
-- about domesticated birds
-- about the Birdman of Alcatraz
etc. etc.

General advice on writing prompts:
Write prompts to the AI agent of your choice as tho you were speaking to a human assistant.

[williamjones]

Post by williamjones » Yesterday, 1:55 pm

quartertone wrote: ↑March 9th, 2023, 9:12 pm
williamjones wrote: ↑March 8th, 2023, 6:05 pm
Below is a list of books given by the new AI chatbotutilities, ChatGPT, Bing AI, Jaser.AI, Copy.AI, etc.
The prompts I used were of this type:
"Give me a list of 20 books in the public domain that are about birds."

Ha! Cool! I wonder if it would be "smart" enough to figure out the prompt "Give me a list of 20 books in the public domain that are about birds and are not in the Librivox catalogue"
==============================

This is the response I got when testing for whether ChatGPT is aware of the contents (any of the contents) of the Librivox Catalog:

My Prompt: List the books in the Librivox catalog narrated by Michele Fry

ChatGPT response:
As an AI language model, I do not have direct access to the Librivox catalog. However, you can easily search for the books narrated by Michele Fry on the Librivox website using the following steps:

Go to the Librivox website (https://librivox.org/)
Click on the "Catalog" button in the top menu.
In the search bar, type "Michele Fry" and hit enter.
You will see a list of books narrated by Michele Fry.
Alternatively, you can use the Librivox advanced search feature to find books narrated by Michele Fry by following these steps:

Go to the Librivox website (https://librivox.org/)
Click on the "Catalog" button in the top menu.
Click on the "Advanced Search" link next to the search bar.
In the "Reader" field, type "Michele Fry" and hit enter.
You will see a list of books narrated by Michele Fry that meet your search criteria.

There are a few other sly things I might try, but I am swamped with prior obligations right now. Stay tuned, tho!

[msfry]

Interesting. Do you have links to the various new AI chatbots that we can click on and begin searching?

FYI, a lot of work from the 1950's is PD, if the author did not renew their copyright by a certain deadline. Some articles claim that up to 85% of printed material from that period fits into this description. It would be a treasure trove for us if we could definitively ascertain copyright status of those.

I have long had suspicions that a great many news articles these days are written by these bots, passing themselves off as by real authors. It's a dead giveaway when the same phrasing is used in one paragraph after another. But for this application, it could work pretty well.

[williamjones]

Interesting. Do you have links to the various new AI chatbots that we can click on and begin searching?

FYI, a lot of work from the 1950's is PD, if the author did not renew their copyright by a certain deadline. Some articles claim that up to 85% of printed material from that period fits into this description. It would be a treasure trove for us if we could definitively ascertain copyright status of those.

I have long had suspicions that a great many news articles these days are written by these bots, passing themselves off as by real authors. It's a dead giveaway when the same phrasing is used in one paragraph after another. But for this application, it could work pretty well.

Here are links to the AI agents that I've tried the most.

The main AI agent: I've been using this since November.
https://chat.openai.com/chat

This is the best UI (User Interface) to ChatGPT for casual users.
https://www.jasper.ai/

Microsoft Bing AI user interface. Not bad
https://www.bing.com/?PC=EE24

-- I have modified the prompts I've been using to include "...and show the publication dates)

Hope this helps.

[williamjones]

Any Examples?!?!?
It would greatly help me find out whether AI knows anything about a book being PD or just the publication dates.
MSFRY noted that there are a raft of books/publications whose copyrights have not been renewed. Thus, a book could have been published in the 1950s with no renewed copyright; so it is still PD despite the date being newer than 1947.

If I had some examples of these, I could discover how "smart" AI really is.
Please PM me at williamjones.

Thank you.

[Penumbra]

Have a look at pdbooks.info. It lists book titles, publication dates, and whether each book is PD in USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. I don't know how accurate it is. I've checked a few titles against PG and Hathi and for those books they have agreed on copyright status.

[williamjones]

Have a look at pdbooks.info. It lists book titles, publication dates, and whether each book is PD in USA, UK, Canada, and Australia. I don't know how accurate it is. I've checked a few titles against PG and Hathi and for those books they have agreed on copyright status.

Thank you, Tom. I've used your two references many times.

But, the thrust of my request is to find books/articles which (1) were published after the current default PD date, AND (2) nevertheless now classified as PD.

I am testing how much ChatGPT really knows! So, I need to have examples to put before ChatGPT in this form:

Is the book "Ducks Nibbled My Sister To Death" in the public domain?

If this fictitious book were published in 1950, for example, but the copyright not been renewed, the answer should be "Yes".

If you have any such examples, please get them to me.

[Penumbra]

But, the thrust of my request is to find books/articles which (1) were published after the current default PD date, AND (2) nevertheless now classified as PD.

If you look at pdbooks.info you will find plenty of titles that were published in the '30's and later and are listed as in the public domain in the US.

A book not on that list but PD in the US according to PG is Mars Is My Destination by Frank Belknap Long, published in 1962.

[williamjones]

Thanks, Tom Penn!

[msfry]

Searching Bing for "unrenewed book copyrights for the years 1923 - 1963", I found the links below. Various universities, libraries, and the LofC, all seem to be keen to find this info too, but they run into problems, just as your bots do. Visitors here might want to check them out if they haven't already:

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/10/2217205/librarians-are-finding-thousands-of-books-no-longer-protected-by-copyright-law

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals

How Can I Tell Whether A Copyright Was Renewed:
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html

Copyright Registration and Renewal Records
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

It would be great if we had a full list but I don't think it exists . . . YET.

[williamjones]

Searching Bing for "unrenewed book copyrights for the years 1923 - 1963", I found the links below. Various universities, libraries, and the LofC, all seem to be keen to find this info too, but they run into problems, just as your bots do. Visitors here might want to check them out if they haven't already:

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/02/10/2217205/librarians-are-finding-thousands-of-books-no-longer-protected-by-copyright-law

https://exhibits.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals

How Can I Tell Whether A Copyright Was Renewed:
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/renewals.html

Copyright Registration and Renewal Records
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/cce/

It would be great if we had a full list but I don't think it exists . . . YET.

Such a list would be HUGE!!!
But, maybe, just maybe, AI will come thru for us.
I'd say the chances are 50/50.
Thanks for the info you sent.

[msfry]

Calling your attention to a new thread I opened today, discussing GPT's history and future in general, and widening the discussion of AI's future.

ChatGPT, and GPT-4, and AI in our futures

[msfry]

I just ran across this link, but can't actually make any sense of how to use the pages it links to.

https://lithub.com/psst-turns-out-80-of-books-published-in-1924-1963-are-secretly-in-the-public-domain/

[redrun]

The two datasets linked in the article seem helpful for finding whether a registered copyright was then renewed. If not, the work might be PD in the US before the usual 95-year expiration. Here's the process PG follows to figure this out:
https://www.gutenberg.org/help/copyright.html#rule-6-failure-of-us-works-to-comply-with-renewal-requirements-prior-to-1964

So as part of PG's process, assuming they don't already have better sources, a PG volunteer could search for registrations in one place, then for matching renewals in the other.
Both 'xml' and 'tsv' files can searched on GitHub or in Notepad, but the hope is that folks will make tools to do the searching for you. One such tool, currently marked experimental:
https://cce-search.nypl.org/

If you're not looking for a particular work and just want a sampling of works whose copyright is probably expired, you can check this bot's posts:
https://botsin.space/@SecretlyPublicDomain

[msfry]

Thanks, redrun. I perused the links you provided and they look interesting. It makes one appreciate the tediuos process.