Because there’s already too many books written by humans for people to read, there is no marketable reason why a person would turn to something written by a computer among an overwhelming sea of options that already exists.

Amazon is swamped by AI content and no one is buying it. It’s just more noise.

I have zero interest in reading a book authored by an AI

Because it sucks

If they get better than people at writing engaging and thought-provoking and interesting books, than they will take over the book industry. However, then we do get better books. Just fewer authors.

We’re not there yet. I don’t close we are. AI progress seems to be so staggered that I can’t tell if we’re on the cusp of the next giant leap or the next giant stagnation. But we’ll know if we get there.

It will be easy to tell what was written by real people because authors will speak up, and all you will have to do is pay attention. I won’t have any problems with avoiding it.

The issue is going to be other readers. And the downstream issue is going to be that publishers are going to be drooling at the opportunity to not have to pay people to write books for them to publish. If people start buying books that are “AI” generated, then publishers will pursue it as a legitimate business model, and reduce investment even further in actual authors. That will make it even harder for authors and readers to produce and experience art.

So anyway, don’t buy “AI” books.

For mass consumption books AI is absolutely going to take over.
But people are still going to want to create art and consume art that has genuine human connection. It’ll probably be niche but it kinda already is.

Denial.

It’s a good question, and it’s likely that your worst fears regarding AI literature will become true. I’m sure certain AI algorithms will also be copyrighted and leased to individuals, whom can use it to create customized reading experiences.

The answer is simple: we can smash all the computers with two-by-fours.

Because a machine cannot currently even come close to the nuance you need to have good writing. Maybe down the road that will be possible but writing a book is not the same king of thing as say writing a block of code.

When an artist finds their muse, their glimmer or whatever you call that spark, the artwork comes out so naturally and easy. As for writers, the story practically writes itself. Words string together in such unusual sequences that the conscious human mind can’t typically come up. It taps into a primal part of our being that engages the senses, it tries to put into words feeling we collectively know but cannot grasp onto. When the audience consumes such material, they too get to envelop that beauty and enjoy it.

Meanwhile AI could string together words, but it uses a database to produce the algorithm. But by itself, it’s lacking the soul that makes it relatable and engaging. Not saying that it can’t learn to write and I’m pretty sure some writers out there incorporated AI into their writing process. So who’s to say?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaU6tI2pb3M&pp=ygUKRXRoaWNhbCBhaQ%3D%3D

I apologize for the length of the video, but I promise it’s good.

AI is not creative, it’s exploitative. It is not capable of improving on itself, especially when it comes to the basic questions of humanity that literature engages in.

Could it write a decent run of the mill YA pop novel? Sure, maybe. Could it create a work of long-form journalism? No. A truly challenging novel about modern life? No.

It’s not actually intelligent, and every part of it still relies on human labor.

It probably will. The Luddites were right.

I think it’s going to be a long, long time–decades at least–before AI is capable of generating anything that I’d be interested in reading much of. In a good novel, every detail has to hang together and reference what’s come before and what’s still to come. The kind of little glitches that we’ve learned to pick out in AI-generated art will stick out like a sort thumb in a novel-length written piece.

It may be earlier that AI learns to reproduce the most formulaic, uninspired novels. The dregs of the romance genre, for example. (Nothing against actually good romance novels.) I’m not personally worried about that, because I don’t care about those books.

I’m confident that AI will destroy the book industry as we know it. Same with music. It will be great for consumers. The power loom destroyed the weaver’s guilds, but it was fantastic for everyone who liked wearing clothes.