Literature has always been an interest of mine. I adore reading, especially books that deal with the human condition. Books such as The Brothers Karamazov, Master and Margharita, Steppenwolf, The Bridge on the Drina… All of these books represent a deep analysis of humans, and the authors are giving their perspective. Their prior experiences were not controlled inputs, their speech was not controlled to not offend anyone. Dark topics such as death, depression, drugs, etc. were discussed. Behind the words, there was emotion and wisdom.
Now, one good thing about generative AI is that it can create stories. You give it a topic and a style or writer and it will generate narrative. So, for you as a reader it can be fun to experiment with. I experimented a lot and I have several comments. Firstly, the writing styles are very peculiar. The writing is very similar to the authors, but at the same time there is a something very similar in all of them. Maybe its just my bias because I know AI generated it, but it seemed like it was all from the same person trying to impersonate different authors. Secondly, the content seems a bit off. It starts off all well, but at a certain point, where the author would have provided some originality or some interesting ideas, the AI seems to shy away/ The writing style appears to be inclusive of everyone and everything. This is okay, but if I ask for Dostoevsky, I am not expecting a multicultural environment, complete understanding and inclusivity, as he was living in 19th century Russia.
I was very excited at this idea of being able to generate more and more content from my favourite writers. My question is do you think that AI will replace real writers? At the moment I don’t see it as possible, but I am also thinking about ways of how should it improve. I have none haha.
Thank you for the interesting blog post. In my opinion, it will not replace real writers completely. Similar to what you said, it felt like AI tried to impersonate the real author which might feel unnatural or that there is something off. However, I do think the real authors can use generative AI to help them write their next story or improve their story. And in the future, how authentic or original are the stories generated by AI? What about plagiarism? Would you support AI authors (like real authors)? All questions that might affect if real writers will be replaced by AI writers.
Do you think AI can be creative in the future? currently I think most of the material is derivative: it can only impersonate off of existing material. So it can replicate through its database, but in some way every idea it generates will be based off of what is already there.
One thing I find important in a book is the atmosphere, the kind of feeling it gives the reader. Although an Ai may be able to write somewhat atmospherically, it does not in itself understand what that means. You can only inform it about what may be considered a certain atmosphere. And of course, feeling is subjective anyway, so for an AI that might make it very difficult to come up with a meaningful contribution.