{"id":1197,"date":"2025-06-27T21:27:24","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T21:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/?page_id=1197"},"modified":"2026-04-07T23:22:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T23:22:47","slug":"statement-on-ai-in-indexing","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/statement-on-ai-in-indexing\/","title":{"rendered":"Statement on AI in Indexing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The DPI-SIG is proud to announce consensus on the below Statement on the Role of AI in Indexing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The AI Committee of the American Society for Indexing recently completed <a href=\"https:\/\/asindexing.org\/ai-and-indexing\/\">tests with AI and indexing<\/a> that show significant shortcomings of AI-generated indexes and suggest they are not likely to substantially improve in the near future.\u00a0 Recommendations include educating new indexers as well as authors, editors, and prospective clients about these shortcomings. Specific recommendations call for policies and statements in our websites and client materials.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Individual indexers are welcome and encouraged to follow suit with their own statements or policies so they too can educate the public as well as their individual clients and contacts. <a href=\"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/template-ai-statements-for-individual-indexers\/\">Template versions of the statement for individual indexers are available here<\/a>. Other SIGs and groups wishing to develop their own statement on AI are welcome to use ours as a template. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>DPI-SIG Statement on the Role of AI in Indexing<\/strong> (as of April 7, 2026)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Our current assessment is that using large language model AIs (LLMs) such as ChatGPT to generate indexes does not produce results that come anywhere near meeting our standards for excellence in Indexing. We also advise that documents not be uploaded or shared with LLMs without explicit client permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>These AI chatbots fail at the indexer\u2019s primary task: to ensure readers find needed information.<\/strong> Tests show that AI chatbots typically provide inadequate and inappropriate structure and cross-references, both under- and over-index material, and produce inaccurate indexes that require significant human remediation. Each of these failings is problematic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Inadequate or inappropriate index structure<\/strong>, especially with regards to cross-references, prevents readers from effectively navigating to subtopics and related topics while misrepresenting the focus of the book<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Under- and over-indexing <\/strong>produces bloated indexes that omit significant content. Over-indexing increases printing costs and requires readers to wade through irrelevant material to reach desired content; under-indexing prevents readers from locating information and misdirects readers into thinking information isn\u2019t included in the book<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Accuracy issues<\/strong>\u2014including failure to pass a standard test for page reference accuracy and an extremely high rate of issues that require manual remediation\u2014 waste readers\u2019 time and breaks the trust between readers and the book<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The human brain of a professional indexer is still the best tool<\/strong> for analyzing, writing, and editing an index in full awareness of context as per quality standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The DPI-SIG is proud to announce consensus on the below Statement on the Role of AI in Indexing. The AI Committee of the American Society for Indexing recently completed tests with AI and indexing that show significant shortcomings of AI-generated indexes and suggest they are not likely to substantially improve in the near future.\u00a0 Recommendations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1197","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1197"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1258,"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1197\/revisions\/1258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digital-publications-indexing.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}