r/books • u/ubcstaffer123 • 21h ago
Don’t let AI kill the author
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/09/24/dont-let-ai-kill-the-author60
u/Own-Animator-7526 21h ago
Don't let paywalls kill the reader.
1
u/gonegonegoneaway211 39m ago
You could always just plug it into an AI and let that guess what it said. Oh wait...
7
u/strangeMeursault2 21h ago
Of course me reading mostly classics probably "kills the author" just as much as hypothetical people only buying AI books.
I should probably buy a few new books from time to time.
14
u/Uptons_BJs 21h ago
To me there's really two fears here:
- I don't think "AI will kill the author", but will AI kill the "professional author"? In the sense that, there are people out there today whose career it is full time to write, but if AI decimates the publishing industry, those opportunities might no longer exist. We might end up in a world where, authors still exist, but it becomes a hobby, and nobody can write as profession anymore.
- The mere existence of a powerful tool that can help you write is seductive. And more and more authors will resort to it eventually, if not to completely replace human writing, but to supplement and partially replace human writing. This might mean that 100% hand written prose might become more and more rare, as the majority of articles become a blend of AI and human writing.
6
u/Xercies_jday 20h ago
I mean the first one has pretty much already happened. It is very rare for a writer to be full time on just their books alone.
The second one is probably going to happen, but I do feel artists are doing themselves a disservice. Art in a lot of ways is made up in the choices we make.
8
u/Adventurous_Storm356 20h ago
I mean this is not a new phenomenon. It has always been hard to impossible to make a living from writing alone, be it prose or journalism. Historically, most famous writers came from very wealthy families and were only able to be full time writers because they could afford to just live off their estate.
2
u/Xercies_jday 19h ago
There was a period of time, let's call it the early Stephen King era because he is the epitome, where a person could actually make a living out of publishing work.
5
u/Adventurous_Storm356 19h ago
Stephen King, Joanne Rowling etc. are unique phenomena, and not by any means representative for the writing profession overall. The vast majority of writers, just like artists and musicians, always had to have a day job. This was the case before AI as well.
1
1
u/NekoCatSidhe 20h ago
It is much more likely that AI will only replace certain professional authors, mainly non-fiction ones (because if an AI can do the research on a topic for you and summarize it, what more does an author bring unless they are an academic specialized on the subject and can be trusted to be particularly insightful on it ?) and the writers of the sloppiest and pulpiest of generic genre fiction, like those third-rate romantasy or litRPG series self-published on Amazon, because those are the kind of genres whose readers care way more about quantity and having the « right » tropes rather than prose quality or originality of the story.
There is probably another debate to have about the use of AI for editing human-written texts in order to make them clearer, which a lot of people are already doing because a lot of people have to write texts for their jobs without being good writers. It definitely does not seem to be a good idea to do that for books, if only because the texts are much more likely to accidentally trigger an AI detector afterwards and a lot of other people on social media are all too ready to take out the pitchforks and torches and burn at the stake the offending author when that happens.
-8
u/Visual_Lie_1242 21h ago
People like you are insufferable. It's very obvious you are neither a reader or a writer or know how writing works.
7
u/Own-Animator-7526 21h ago
That would be neither ... nor, my writing friend.
-7
-6
u/Visual_Lie_1242 21h ago
Also not you constantly glazing AI and coming here to worship at the altar of slop because you are too lazy to actually acquire any writing skills or interest in literature. Shilling AI with every other post fucking loser.
7
u/Own-Animator-7526 21h ago
You really need to up your insult game. Has literature taught you nothing?
1
u/Visual_Lie_1242 20h ago
Apparently the only thing literature has taught you is posting about you is writing with AI, so your motivations are clear.
6
u/Own-Animator-7526 20h ago
Apparently the only thing literature has taught you is posting about you is writing with AI ...
Sorry I'm having trouble parsing that. Could you possibly rephrase?
1
3
u/lunarwolf2008 20h ago
i mean i don't think they are wrong. there is many handcrafted things that are functionally unnecessary in todays society, yet there are people who buy them instead of purchasing commercial versions
0
u/Visual_Lie_1242 20h ago
Do you think the Master and Margarita is equal to a doily your grandma put over her TV?
-1
4
u/the_quark 21h ago
The author's already dead, man.
1
u/la_mine_de_plomb 9h ago
From beyond the paywall:
Whatever French theorists have to say about the death of the author, readers still want to know that a person wrote the words in front of them.
1
u/Flapjack__Palmdale 21h ago
Hey, Barthes reference! Death of the author became my core approach to reading in college
2
u/Enkindle451 21h ago
The concept of "death of the author" already killed the author by turning art from a way for people to express themselves and talk to others/society into something that instead focuses on audience consumption. The next inevitable step was obviously going to be literally removing the author from the equation altogether. It's the ultimate expression of post modernism where "art" is rendered as nothing more than a product scraped together from others works and tailor made for each individual to provide them nothing but feel good vibes while avoiding anything that might upset them or force them to think.
5
u/MaxChaplin 18h ago
That's not what death of the author means. It doesn't preclude artists from expressing themselves through their work, and it certainly doesn't encourage passive consumption. It only says that an artist can't dictate to the viewers what the artist's work means to them.
The author's exclusive ability to infuse a work with meaning only holds during the creation process. Once they deem their work complete and send their child to the world, it gains a life of its own.
5
u/NoSoundNoFury 20h ago
post modernism nothing but feel good vibes
It is very clear that you know nothing of either postmodernism nor literature, lol. Stop spending so much time with right wing Tiktok ...
5
u/confringos The Classics 20h ago
Out of curiosity, what makes their comment right wing? American politics are weird.
I agree with most of what they said though.
7
u/NoSoundNoFury 19h ago edited 19h ago
I'm not American and I don't know about op. There's a tradition of conservatives and right wingers rejecting modern and postmodern art that goes back at least one century. The reasons vary, but in general, modern and postmodern art has embraced many things that right wingers hate, such as female and lgbtq artists, anti capitalist messages, rejection of tradition and consumerism, but instead embraced individualism etc. The claim that postmodern "woke" art is just virtue signaling "feel good" art is very common in today's right wing circles, for example in the recent debates about Nolan's The Odyssey.
The idea that art is an expression of the artist's self, their 'genius', is an idea derived from romanticism that postmodern art rejects, but many current conservative and right wing commentators embrace again.
Many, if not most postmodern artists do in fact challenge you and make you uncomfortable - people like Cormac McCarthy, Elfriede Jelinek, Michel Houellebecq would be good examples. Try to read some actual postmodern literature and see if it creates "feel good vibes".
1
u/confringos The Classics 17h ago
That’s all well and good, but none of it explains how OP’s argument is inherently right wing?
If anything, the critique of art being reduced to a consumer product is perfectly compatible with left leaning criticism of capitalism. You can disagree with OP, but labelling the argument right wing does not make it one.
1
u/onceuponalilykiss 14h ago edited 13h ago
This is an incredibly absurd take, no one serious in literary studies is going to argue that Barthes was encouraging consumption of this sort.
1
u/confringos The Classics 20h ago
It’s not so much AI killing the author as it is killing our ability to think, research, make an effort, create something original.
0
u/RoyLangston 9h ago
It's long past time copyrights were abolished along with patents. The claim that making a copy of something is the same as stealing it is just a flat-out lie. Authors', artists', and other creators' names should function as trademarks; they should not get monopolies that create artificial scarcity.
-8
-2
u/Capital-Study6436 21h ago
Unfortunately, it is easier said than done.
5
u/Own-Animator-7526 21h ago edited 21h ago
Let us not forget Edgard Varèse: The present day composer refuses to die (1921). Memorably quoted by Frank Zappa.
103
u/deeptravel2 21h ago
I think link-only posts, without a summary or some comments, should be deleted immediately.