Yesterday, at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, I had the pleasure of delivering a presentation titled “Revolutionizing Publishing with AI and Structured Content: Unlocking the Power of XML.” During this talk, I explored how structured content serves as the essential foundation for feeding AI models, and why the old adage “garbage in, garbage out” is particularly true when it comes to artificial intelligence. 

The success of AI, especially in publishing, depends heavily on the quality and organization of the data it consumes. Here’s why structured content plays such a crucial role in improving the performance of AI and how it can revolutionize the publishing industry. 

What is structured content? 

Structured content is information that is organized in a predictable way and classified with metadata. In publishing, we often use XML (Extensible Markup Language) to store this content. Structured content breaks down information into components, making it reusable, semantically rich, and interoperable. This allows for more efficient creation, management, and reuse of content across different platforms and formats. 

During the presentation, we delved into the importance of structured content for achieving efficiency, compliance, and value in publishing workflows. For instance, it enables automated formatting and personalization, ensures content quality, and facilitates content reuse, which can significantly streamline operations.  

AI and structured content: a perfect match 

AI models, particularly generative AI, thrive on data. However, feeding unstructured or poorly organized content into these models can lead to inaccurate or suboptimal results. This is where structured content comes into play. 

Here are a few key reasons why structured content is essential for AI: 

• Easier data processing: The schemas used in structured content, like XML, make it easier for AI algorithms to parse, process, and understand the data. As a result, the models can be trained more efficiently, leading to better outcomes. 

• Contextual understanding: Metadata embedded in structured content provides valuable context, helping AI models understand the semantics and relationships between different data elements more effectively. This can result in improved accuracy and more relevant content generation. 

• Improved accuracy: Structured content is organized and consistent, reducing ambiguity and noise. This allows AI models to better recognize patterns and relationships, which ultimately improves their performance. 

In short, structured content acts as a well-organized foundation that enables AI models to perform at their best. Without it, AI’s ability to deliver precise, context-aware insights and outputs would be severely hindered, see also one of our previous articles: Unlocking the secrets of GPT: how structured content powers next level language models.

AI is already here: examples from others 

In today’s publishing world, AI-powered solutions are already proving their worth. From enhancing proofreading accuracy to optimizing style based on corporate tone, the use of AI can elevate publishing workflows to new heights. AI can even help educational publishers create interactive content, generate quiz questions, or rewrite content based on specific learning needs. 

All these applications rely on structured content. Without it, the AI models would struggle to produce coherent and accurate outputs. 

The takeaway: garbage in, garbage out 

If there’s one key takeaway from my presentation, it’s this: for AI to truly revolutionize publishing, the data it consumes must be well-structured and rich with metadata. The phrase “garbage in, garbage out” is more relevant than ever. Feeding an AI model poorly organized content will inevitably lead to poor results. On the other hand, structured content empowers AI to deliver meaningful, accurate, and contextually relevant outputs, unlocking new possibilities in publishing. 

At Fonto, we’re committed to helping our partners create and manage structured content that maximizes the potential of AI. By embracing XML and other structured content formats, publishers can not only streamline their processes but also harness the full power of AI to create better, more engaging content. 

Find my slides below: