race against the machine

Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash

I’m finding it hard to write today. This is part of the process, of course. I’ve written eleven novels and they’ve all had their challenges. Plotting The Skeleton Key was like wrestling an ouroboros. I wrote Watch Her Fall during the first lockdown of 2020 when I was barking mad. The Night Stairs, the one that’s out in July, had me prodding painful teenage memories. My current work-in-progress is set in Italy, a country with different laws and customs, but that’s not what’s making me freeze at the keyboard.

This difficulty is unprecedented and unwelcome.

It is a full-on existential crisis.

The question that’s keeping me awake at night is -

Are authors an endangered species?

I am a late adopter of technology. I didn’t even get an iPad till last year. When it comes to the glorious possibilities and terrifying consequences of Artificial Intelligence, I haven’t had my head in the hand so much as my whole body. This week, a viral article in the New York Times forced me – and every author I know- to reckon with the future. Mills & Boon ‘author’ Coral Hart (not her real name) started out writing books the normal way – with her imagination and a blank page – but has recently pivoted to using AI to write her novels. Last year, she produced more than 200 romance novels in a range of subgenres, from dark mafia romances to sweet teen stories, and self-published them on Amazon. They sold around 50,000 copies, earning Ms. Hart six figures. ‘Coral’ is also coaching others to do the same, and woe betide any author who doesn’t want to join her pyramid scheme. ‘If I can generate a book in a day,’ she says, ‘And you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?’

The race! THE RACE! I thought I was SLICING OPEN A VEIN AND POURING MY SOUL ONTO THE PAGE, ‘Coral’, not going for gold in the 400-metre hurdles.

Apparently AI books are shite, but the tech is advancing so quickly that one day the machines will be able to mimic even great wordsmiths like me. Am I a mug for resisting the lure? Should I be at least taking shortcuts? What would that even look like? I don’t want to skimp on research (I love it, it inspires me) or outsource my words (I only write the skeletons of plots so I can drape them in poetry). My biggest headache is always psychological logistics; for example, if character X doesn’t know fact Y then what motivates her to confront character Z in the endgame. It is a long-winded but extremely human process. If this headfuckery is something a computer can work out then what is the point of me?

Never mind that AI writes books using stolen copyrighted material. Never mind the environmentally ruinous cost of all the water that’s needed to cool all the servers that power the services.

There are a couple of wan rays of hope, I suppose. My daughters, 13 and 17, can recognise AI slop in seconds. They and their peers shame each other for sharing computer-generated content, it’s about as cool as your nan sharing sentimental bollocks about Britain In A Bygone Era on Facebook.

And at literary events, I meet discerning readers who would rather eat their own hair than read something written by a AI (although, as time goes by, how will we even know?). My guess is that in future books will become like cheese. There will be the ultra-processed crap that just fills a hole and then human-authored, prestige items. The only problem with that is that not everyone can afford to buy artisan camembert. Will there be enough readers of quality fiction to sustain the publishing and bookselling industries or in five years time, will all the writers will be living in tents in the park, burning our backlists to stay warm and fighting each other for the last drops of water on a parched riverbed?

What’s your take on it all? Boycott it entirely? Lean in and win ‘the race’? I’d love to hear from other creatives about how you’re coping. Someone, please, tell me it’s all going to be alright. I’ve got a book to write here.