Man claims to 'read' 100+ books a day using ChatGPT — and it's dividing the internet

Packy McCormick, who goes by @packym on X, has apparently found a top-notch solution for reading 100+ books per day using ChatGPT. Yes, you read that right! Well, McCormick shared a screenshot of an elaborate summary of the book "Anna Karenina," which he got from ChatGPT, calling it a "pro tip" for all avid readers.

When McCormick asked ChatGPT to summarize Leo Tolstoy's novel, "Anna Karenina," the chatbot gave him everything he needed about the book. In the beginning, ChatGPT mentioned the most important details about the novel, like the author's name and the various themes woven through the plot. Moving ahead, ChatGPT talked about the central character — Anna — who is basically stuck in a loveless marriage with Alexei Karenina, a government official. Amidst a troubled marriage, she meets Count Vronsky and begins a "passionate affair." After briefly introducing the protagonist, ChatGPT moved on to swiftly talk about how the new couple find themselves "strained under the weight of social scorn." Further, the summary introduced Konstantin Levin, a character inspired by Tolstoy himself, drawing parallels between his love life and that of Anna Karenina. 

In another follow-up post, McCormick shared another screenshot of a ChatGPT-generated summary of the book "The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time," by David L. Ulin.

Today, imagining a world without AI is nearly impossible. In fact, according to NerdyNav, ChatGPT reports 800 million weekly active users, which includes over 15.5 million subscribers. Besides, 122.58 million users use ChatGPT daily, and the chatbot processes more than 1 billion queries every single day.

Meanwhile, McCormick's post received a mixed reaction on social media, with some calling it a smart use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), while others dismissed it. @mikeinsoftware commented, "This is a joke, right? You can’t understand a book by reading the summary, especially one with deep human emotions and interactions." A user who goes by @sterespect on X said, "You can read even more than 100 if you ask it to summarize each one in a sentence." @mwstateofmind said, "Not the worst idea in the world to get a surface-level knowledge of the world, but if you think this is 'education' or in any way similar to reading the full text, you are a fool — and now playing dumb — duh, why people read this, I just said a true thing." @jakewilliam90 shared, "This is just for guys who want to impress people by saying something that implies they’ve read certain great books."

On the other hand, @paprikagirl_jp wrote, "You’re missing the entire point of reading. Books aren’t just about the narrative. They’re about word usage and language. They’re about culture — they give you quotes, insight into historical context, and worldview. You cannot get any of that with a child’s summary of what was an iconic book that served to change our world when it was released." Similarly. @charlesherdy said, "Reading a summary is not comparable to reading the book. Otherwise, we’d just read a book of summaries." @dwmcmillen commented, "You could already do this with Wikipedia. My opinion: Reading primary sources and wrestling with the ideas will be even more important than in the past. Without them, it’s going to be hard to know what’s real."

You can follow Packy McCormick (@packym) on X for more book-related content.