Book publishers must defend themselves against AI

AI writing is terrible. At first glance it appears intelligent, at second glance empty. It has the unbearable buoyancy of a holiday rep. It offers little humor and nothing in the way of originality. But her fatal flaw is the absence of vulnerability. A writer is a person and a person is a mess, and as readers, as people, as chaos, we identify with the chaos.

Despite its shortcomings, AI writing is spreading. Literary agents drowning in submissions have resorted to disclaimers to discourage writing with AI. Literary magazines have done the same. Amazon, meanwhile, is struggling to stem the tide of AI-generated books.

Authors find that sloppy imitations appear shortly after their works go on sale. Fake books cause real harm. On a small scale, uninformed readers could avoid real authors in the future. On a larger scale, substandard books are damaging consumer confidence and undermining the public’s already dwindling appetite for literature.