Book publishers must fight back against AI
AI writing is God-awful. It appears intelligent at first glance, empty at second. It possesses the insufferable buoyancy of a holiday rep. It offers little by way of humour, nothing by way of originality. But its fatal flaw is the absence of vulnerability. A writer is a person and a person is a mess and, as readers, as people, as messes, we identify with the mess. Despite its flaws, AI writing is spreading. Literary agents, drowning in submissions, have resorted to disclaimers discouraging AI writing. Literary magazines have done the same. Amazon, meanwhile, has struggled to stem the tide of AI-generated books. Authors are finding that, soon after their work hits the shelves, sloppy imitations emerge. Fake books do real harm.
