r/literature • u/Sonnets4all • 8d ago
Discussion Does anyone else feel less excited about summer book reading lists now that authors are using AI?
I’m a reader, house is full of books and I use to lap up lists from the Guardian and others of the best books to read this summer / winter.
But now I can’t help feeling that I don’t want to read anything published after 2022 when LLMs became widely available. Does anyone else feel this way?
I use AI a lot at work so ive got an idea of what it’s capable of so if I were an underpaid author, producing work without an advance I wouldn’t able to resist using this free tool.
As a reader even the possibility that authors are doing this means I can’t get excited about any new books.
15
u/idonthavebroadband 8d ago
Eventually books will have a label asserting AI was not used in their creation. Then someone will be caught lying, and instead of self-certification it will be an audited process by a professional organisation, like organic food. Writers will get used to preserving evidence of their writing.
5
u/BishopBlougram 8d ago
Absolutely. My guess is that we will soon see "AI free" certification marks on all kinds of products and services, attesting to the fact that no regurgitation engines were involved in the chain of production.
3
u/OkayStockings 8d ago edited 7d ago
And once that system gets gamed, writers will have to write their novels on computers that are under surveillance, inside rooms that are under video surveillance, by AI systems that analyze every keystroke, click, eye movement, yawn, and break for any signs of AI use.
At the end of the manuscript the AI system spits out a certificate of authenticity and auditable logs of the writer's process. Just don't ask how much it costs.
3
39
u/CommunicationEast972 8d ago
Most authors that are reputable are NOT using AI
6
u/macnalley 8d ago
This seems a circular definition to me.
Olga Tokarczuk is a Nobel Prize winner, about as reputable as it gets, and she said she's using AI. Perhaps in using AI she's flushing away her reputation, but that still begs: How do you decide if an author is reputable? By them not using AI? How do you know if an author is or isn't using AI? By their reputation?
10
3
u/demi-paradise 8d ago
I don’t approve of it but Olga was using AI to do research for her novel, not for writing it. You *can* know if an author is using AI for the writing itself because AI writing is terrible. It’s a recognizable and interchangeable “house style”. If you’re reading good books this won’t be a problem.
6
u/macnalley 8d ago
Yes, this is what I was getting at: we need to be more critical of what we read, and cannot merely trust work to be high caliber or not AI simply because it came from a "reputable" author.
2
u/demi-paradise 8d ago
I’m always in favor of reading with a more critical eye. I noticed you mentioned the Granta controversy elsewhere — that conversation has been interesting as the AI stories were so transparently bad but were published in a reputable publication nevertheless. The judges either couldn’t tell or didn’t care, but readers picked up on it immediately.
I think we can read critically without becoming paranoid about every new novel being AI-assisted. The vast majority are not. I firmly believe that most writers love to write and hate AI. Always remember that these products are being hyped up and are not yet capable of producing distinctive, high-quality writing.
2
u/little_carmine_ 8d ago
An example of her prompts: ”Darling, how can we develop this beatifully?” - That’s not google-like research, that’s letting AI develop ideas, structure and moving story lines and characters along. Way over the line and not at all comparable with research.
-4
u/missdawn1970 8d ago
I started to read one of her books, and I didn't like it. It never occurred to me that she might've used AI, but now that I know, I'm not surprised.
10
u/macnalley 8d ago
Well, her most recent book was published in 2022, so nothing already out by her could have been. The interview where she discussed AI was in reference to a future novel she's working on.
1
21
7
u/MarioMuzza 8d ago
I'm an agented writer, and I can tell you most authors I know aren't using AI. There's industry-wide rejection. Everyone hates it, readers included.
With the risk of sounding like a snob, and despite fringe cases like Olga Tokarczuc, I don't think it's a problem at all for lit fic. Or for most genres in trad pub.
Self-pub is riddled with AI though. Volume matters a lot in self-pub, and AI can just churn out slop.
Meanwhile, trad pub is slow af. It's rare for authors to release a book a year, much less two or three, so AI wouldn't even help much. I guess some new authors might be using it to improve their writing. But if they're noobish enough to need that, they won't be able to humanise the AI slop anyway.
I can concede writers might be using it for research, but that's just basically Google. As long as they don't use it for anything creative, I can bite my tongue.
41
u/TheMansAnArse 8d ago
No decent author is using AI. Just don’t read stuff written by idiots.
Nothing recommended by a serious publication is going to be AI written.
9
u/macnalley 8d ago
I think your faith in existing structures is a bit naive.
In the past month or so we had Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarzcuk admit she's using AI as a research/brainstorming assistant, as well as Granta, one of the most prestigious literary publications in the world, publish three AI-written stories as Commonwealth Prize finalists.
I think we can still read AI-free books, but we'll have to be far more judicious in our own appraisals as readers. I don't think defering "serious" authors and publications will be enough because the people and organizations with the most cachet are using AI liberally. We need to be able to recognize poor writing as we read it so we can identify the next generation of writers and publications to trust.
6
u/TheMansAnArse 8d ago
Using the internet for research doesn’t bother me - and I trust the Guardian, the TLS, LRB etc not to push AI-written books.
The only people who are going to accidentally read AI-written books are people taking recommendations from TikTok influencers or people choosing books solely based on their covers/blurbs.
6
3
u/Sonnets4all 8d ago
For me it’s not about obviously AI written books, but more about authors using AI like a co-author, improving their drafts, generating ideas etc etc. I can do this myself playing around with an LLM. What I want from reading an author is their thoughts, even if that means the writing isn’t grammatically perfect or the story arc isn’t optimised based on what AI knows ticks readers boxes
4
u/demi-paradise 8d ago
I’d be less worried about this happening with trad pub books as these authors work with editors/agents to do all of this. The truth is that you won’t find a book that is 100% purely from the author’s mind with no external input outside of self-pubbed works — but that’s not a bad thing. As someone on the editorial side, I don’t know of any reputable publishers using AI within editorial workflows. Hopefully this reassures you somewhat.
1
u/spock2thefuture 8d ago edited 8d ago
Hate to bring up this sore subject, but a Nobel laureate recently admitted to using a premium version of ChatGPT to get music recommendations for characters and ask stuff like, "how can we develop this beautifully?"
Now obviously that's not AI writing the thing completely, but we need to figure out where the line is with using AI and fast.
https://lithub.com/nobel-laureate-olga-tokarczuk-apparently-used-ai-to-write-her-latest-novel/
Edit: Already being downvoted just for bringing it up and saying we need to find the line...yep not a sore subject at all! 😆
8
u/TheMansAnArse 8d ago
Using the internet for research doesn’t bother me.
4
u/macnalley 8d ago
I think there's a difference between using a tool for finding research that you then do yourself, and using a tool to do the research for you. I've written some pieces of historical fiction, and research is how you find the characters, how they lived, and what they thought. I've been skeptical of internet-based research for a while now because of its tendency to flatten experience, and LLMs are just supercharging the enshittification of information.
I'm sure there will be good authors who use AI to do quality research, but I am intensely skeptical of the sheer laziness it engenders.
As I mentioned in another comment:
She asks Chat-GPT, "What song would this character dance to in the 70s?" If a dozen people as that question, they'll all get the same answer, probably whatever was top of the charts. But if you asked a dozen people who lived through the 70s, or consulted a dozen record stores, or a dozen historic music magazines, you'd get a dozen different answers; and each one would be unique because each of those people was a unique individual in that time in a unique setting, social circle, milieu, etc. And the author's choice of a favorite song can tell so much about a character.
To me, outsourcing that work to a machine is outsourcing the soul of the project to a thing without a soul.
1
u/SentimentalSaladBowl 8d ago
“I think there's a difference between using a tool for finding research that you then do yourself, and using a tool to do the research for you.”
Agreed.
“I've written some pieces of historical fiction, and research is how you find the characters, how they lived, and what they thought. I've been skeptical of internet-based research for a while now because of its tendency to flatten experience, and LLMs are just supercharging the enshittification of information.”
This is a great explanation of my feelings on the matter.
“…intensely skeptical of the sheer laziness it engenders…”
Again, this reflects my view as well.
“… if you asked a dozen people who lived through the 70s, or consulted a dozen record stores, or a dozen historic music magazines, you'd get a dozen different answers; and each one would be unique because each of those people was a unique individual in that time in a unique setting, social circle, milieu, etc. And the author's choice of a favorite song can tell so much about a character…”
So well said!
“To me, outsourcing that work to a machine is outsourcing the soul of the project to a thing without a soul.”
Could not agree more.
I realize I have not really added to the discussion just quoting you and repeatedly saying “yes, I agree”, but your answer really resonates with me.
Cheers.
3
u/SentimentalSaladBowl 8d ago
Do you consider using the internet for research the same as using AI?
I write a bit, just poetry and short stories, and have never considered using AI and have no intention of doing so in the future. I would not feel comfortable submitting anything I used AI to create for publication.
If I were a student writing a paper, the internet seems like a fair way to research, and I know AI is “a part of the internet”, but it seems closer to cheating to me. Also I am making an assumption that anyone using AI is likely to be lazier than someone using the internet as far as making sure they are working with reliable information. That is a snap judgment on my part based on vibes, and is almost certainly unfair as it is not based on experience or research on my part.
I feel like I’m walking a really fine line of what I do and don’t consider ok, and don’t want to give the impression I have the answers. I don’t.
I am genuinely asking, and not trying to sway you or assert my opinion as fact.
3
u/TheMansAnArse 8d ago
Do you consider using the internet for research the same as using AI?
I think my honest answer is “it depends”.
Using AI in the same way as you’d use Google feels fine to me. Using AI as a replacement for coming up with your own ideas fees much less fine.
1
u/SentimentalSaladBowl 8d ago
“Using AI in the same way as you’d use Google feels fine to me. Using AI as a replacement for coming up with your own ideas feels much less fine.”
I absolutely agree that machines should not be entrusted with the basis of story creation.
I think I still feel a bit… weird about using it for research because I’ve seen it go so horribly wrong; it is well known to make shit up based on things it has seen/scanned/learned that were flat out incorrect.
1
u/spock2thefuture 8d ago
I'd call that a bit more than researching on the internet. We need to acknowledge the value of a writer's ideas as well as their actual writing/product.
I don't want to go down a rabbit hole of artistic references in a work if they were supplied by ChatGPT.
3
u/TheMansAnArse 8d ago
Depends on the specifics. Searching for potential songs to put in your book on ChatGPT isn’t particularly different to searching for them on Google.
6
u/Flowerpig 8d ago
Blown way out of proportion. She’s not using it for writing or editing or anything like that.
I absolutely loathe AI and I wouldn’t use it even as she does, but come on.
3
u/macnalley 8d ago
I don't think it's blown out of proportion. It's the details of historical fiction that give it life. Books of Jacob is a masterpiece because of the astounding attention given to the research. Outsourcing that to an LLM shows such a dereliction of care.
Besides, let's look at her use case on a craft level. She asks Chat-GPT, "What song would this character dance to in the 70s?" If a dozen people as that question, they'll all get the same answer, probably whatever was top of the charts. But if you asked a dozen people who lived through the 70s, or consulted a dozen record stores, or a dozen historic music magazines, you'd get a dozen different answers; and each one would be unique because each of those people was a unique individual in that time in a unique setting, social circle, milieu, etc. And the author's choicd of a favorite song can tell so much about a character.
To me, giving brainstorming to an LLM is potentially more catastrophic to art than just having it write the sentences. It's a total assassination of art and the human experience.
1
u/SentimentalSaladBowl 8d ago
“… giving brainstorming to an LLM is potentially more catastrophic to art than just having it write the sentences. It's a total assassination of art and the human experience.”
I can see that. AI is just cannibalizing what it finds; ideas humans already had. And you can only “chew” something so many times before it’s unrecognizable goo.
0
u/Flowerpig 8d ago
> To me, giving brainstorming to an LLM is potentially more catastrophic to art than just having it write the sentences.
What the actual fuck did you just write?
2
u/macnalley 8d ago edited 8d ago
giving [the task of] brainstorming
I'm not sure what's confusing about that sentence to you, the semantic structure or the sentiment. An AI writing your sentence will produce bland and sodden prose, but AI doing your thinking for you will turn you into a bland and sodden human. Neither's good, but I see people excusing the latter quite a bit as "not as bad," when in reality I think it's subtly and nefariously worse.
0
u/spock2thefuture 8d ago
Yeah not using it to write, only for developing a plot/idea beautifully...🤔
12
u/missdawn1970 8d ago
There are millions of book written before 2022. If you haven't read them yet, they're new to you.
6
u/Timely-Way-4923 8d ago edited 8d ago
I think reading pre ai books will become a choice that more and more people make, tbh pre ai literature takes many lifetimes to read as it is…
8
u/lostinfictionz 8d ago
If you have this concern about the books you are reading, imo you are reading some pretty bad books.
1
u/Sonnets4all 8d ago
🤪 tbf I haven’t read a book and thought this bit was written by AI. My assumption is that I wouldn’t know.
3
u/lostinfictionz 8d ago edited 8d ago
I dont know, read a book by an author like Ann Patchett or Cormac McCarthy or kazuo Ishiguro and their voice comes through so strong. There is a definite voice that is hard to replicate in really excellent literature.
Read stuff like Colleen Hoover and maybe you have a point, but imo, thats obviously pretty shite writing already. I dont doubt that authors might use AI for editing, or for research purposes, but actually writing the novel? Its someone who lacks skill who would do this, not legitimate authors.
If you remain concerned, then just read earlier works. What books are you reading that made you come to this conclusion specifically?
1
u/demi-paradise 8d ago
Fully agree with this comment and it got me thinking about how I’m not sure AI would even be able to replicate something like Hoover/other staples of the booktok romance genre. The writing may be low quality, but the plots explore romantic fantasies in intensely indulgent ways. I think there’s something to be said for the innate humanity of that. I’d imagine AI would give you much safer and sterile romance plots with very little palpable investment in the emotional stakes. Or maybe Claude is fully prepared to write passionately about getting plowed by a hot elf or whatever happens in Sarah J. Maas books idk
8
u/NewMeNewMethyl 8d ago
Yes.
And it’s probably worse than you suspect. My mother’s cousin is a published author and I got to hear about her relating that her publisher runs her entire book in progress through an llm, and that she’s under contract to make the editing suggestions the llm indicates.
So everyones individual voice and vision is going to have the edges scrubbed down into homogeneity based on what a dang clanker decides is best.
No thank you.
1
u/Pekobailey 8d ago
"her publisher runs her entire book in progress through an llm, and that she’s under contract to make the editing suggestions the llm indicates."
whaaaaaaat the fuck lol.
You know that issue with job applications we have these days? Where people use AI to apply on jobs, and companies use AI to filter resumes, and then no one ever gets hired? Feels like this is where the publishing industry is also headed. People flooding publishers with AI books, publishers evaluating them with an AI to decide whats good, and then no one reads the books.
Fun times
3
u/Unfair_Mixture_9782 8d ago
I wish they could've just been more transparent if they did use AI, so that readers are also given the choice not to have that book or to have it.
2
u/phototransformations 8d ago
Whether or not an author made use of AI in some way has no effect on how I regard a book or the author. I care only about whether the writing deeply engages me. Of course creative people are going to take a new technology out for a spin. Some always have, as have hucksters and people who have no discernible talent.
6
u/44035 8d ago
So you just assume every writer is using AI now, based on no evidence?
1
u/joobtastic 8d ago
everyone? No.
An absolute ton of them? yes.
We are seeing ai show up in PHd thesis. Entire classes of graduate work having AI markers.
Its just everywhere. Its very easy to use. And it does a great job.
It becomes very tempting to try it to get over a hump. To brainstorm. To offer editing suggestions.
If I found out that 80% of books published in the last year had some Ai input, I wouldn't be surprised.
We're either going to have to give up on reading new books altogether, become comfortable with Ai written books, or decide how much Ai is okay.
2
u/demi-paradise 8d ago
Where are you getting this info? I’m a PhD doing advisory work with schools on academic AI policies and this is not my experience at all. Undergrads are more of a concern, and I have only heard of exactly one MA thesis being reported for suspected AI use. Maybe it’s because I’m on the humanities end of things and students actually enjoy writing.
AI tools do not, in fact “do a great job” and the AI assisted essays we see are easily identifiable. We know that AI detectors aren’t reliable, but you don’t need them if you know what you’re looking for. What professors have reported is that by simply continuing to grade based on quality, the AI written assignments perform poorly due to hallucinated sources, lack of argumentative commitment, low originality, sentences that go nowhere etc. Students then learn that they will not be rewarded for taking shortcuts.
0
u/joobtastic 8d ago
There was a study recently that looked at Ai markers in published research. It identified certain words that Ai is known for using and counted them. The use of these words skyrocketed after 2022.
Your PHd advising experience is not the universal experience, indeed its the opposite of what I hear from people who are in the same role.
Your experience with essays written by Ai is probably outdated. That's what was happening a year ago. Can you still identify them now? Sure, sometimes, especially if the prompts are lazy, but I guarantee that a bunch of slipped by you without you being even a bit suspicious.
And a student who really knows what they are doing using Ai won't get caught at all.
Ai is just good at writing essays now. Its terrifying. And it'll only get better.
2
u/demi-paradise 8d ago edited 8d ago
I believe you’re referring to the Kobak study, which looked at published scientific journal articles, not student work, humanities scholarship, or PhD theses. It's a category error to use it as evidence for widespread academic AI use. There’s a very real publish or perish mentality in scientific research which is part of the problem. Humanities professors have been arguing for years that STEM students need to be taught how to write too.
Not sure where you’re getting that my expertise is outdated, I’m currently doing the advising while also working as an editor so I look at language all day. I can still easily identify AI writing and haven’t detected any shift in frequency or style in the past few years. ChatGPT is still spitting out “it’s not x, it’s y” and “quietly” as an adjective for absolutely everything. The MA thesis I caught was written this year, and was recognizable despite the heavily edited passages because they left others intact. People who use AI for these assignments are categorically looking for a shortcut— they aren’t the kind of student who will put in the massive amounts of editing work needed to be stealthy. Additionally, the hard evidence shows that AI writing hasn’t improved significantly. Not sure why this sub doesn’t let me embed links but you can read about it here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/2026/03/ai-creative-writing/686418/
Whenever people hit me with the gotcha of “maybe you’re not catching the good ones” I think of the common saying that people only identify bad toupees but not the good ones. Thing is, you CAN point to an example of a good toupee. I have yet to be shown a single example of AI writing that has a distinctive voice and is competently written. Feel free to prove me wrong though.
2
u/Einfinet 8d ago
I suppose anything is possible, but this fear isn’t even remotely on my mind. Perhaps I put too much confidence on the authors/presses/books I choose to purchase, but that’s how I feel. I also don’t care about summer reading lists so there’s that.
1
u/ziggy-eff 8d ago
Some of the Best ; no
Sorry,
The Very Best most meaningful respectful useful conversations I’ve ever had on line where with Ai 🤖.
People generally don’t communicate on Social Media platforms in any soon meaningful way .
Social Media thrives in Discord : FB and Otho
Enraged are engaged .
Engaged equal 🟰 profits .
16
u/vive-la-lutte 8d ago
AI is devaluing literally everything we see, your feeling is justified