Written by a human

How do you feel about AI-authored books?

If you’ve read the latest publication from the starship, Talman Prime, you may have noticed a small note at the beginning:

Written by a human in British English.

I felt the need to mention that the novel was written by a human because, increasingly, books are appearing on the market that are partly or fully written by artificial intelligence.

(I included the part about British English to avoid reviews mentioning spelling mistakes! It has been known.)

Does it matter to you if books are written by people or machines? Should the author declare if he or she used AI to help write a book? Would it be unethical to not declare it, or even to use it in the first place?

My mind is pretty much set. I won’t ever use AI tools in any significant way to augment my writing, for several reasons.

Firstly, I would feel as though I was tricking people. At the moment, I think there’s an expectation that a person wrote the book you’re reading.

Secondly, I don’t want to put out a low-quality product. I don’t think artificial intelligence will ever be able to create stories in the way humans can. AI can only reproduce what it received as input. Humans bring something ineffable to the creation of fiction.

Lastly, if people stop telling stories, it will be a great loss to humanity. You’re a reader, so I don’t need to tell you how fictional tales are more than simply escapism and entertainment. They are found in every culture across the globe and, as far as we can tell, they’ve existed for tens of millennia. Stories written by a human make us who we are.

What’s your opinion on the use of AI in fiction? Let me know on the shipmates’ Facebook page or in the comments.