Salman Rushdie says AI won’t threaten authors until it can make people laugh

Salman Rushdie has said that authors are safe from the threat of AI – until the moment it can create a book that makes people laugh.

Speaking at the Hay festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, Rushdie said he had “never tried AI” and liked to pretend it didn’t exist.

But the problem AI had was that it couldn’t make up its own jokes, the writer said. “It has no sense of humour – you don’t want to hear a joke told by ChatGPT. If there’s a moment when there’s a funny book written by…