A Nobel Prize–winning author sparked controversy after revealing that she uses artificial intelligence in her writing process, Literary Hub reports.
Olga Tokarczuk, the Polish author of novels including Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead and The Books of Jacob, made the admission at an event in Poznań, Poland. Writer Maks Sipowicz translated some of her remarks and posted them on the social network Bluesky.
“When writing my latest novel…I asked this advanced model what kind of songs my protagonists would be listening to at a dance, a few dozen years ago, and AI gave me a few titles,” Tokarczuk said. “Often I just ask the machine, Darling, how could we develop this beautifully? Even though I know about hallucinations and many factual errors in the algorithms in terms of economics and hard data, I have to add that in literary fiction this technology is an advantage of unbelievable proportion.”
Tokarczuk offered a statement to Literary Hub, which reads in part, “I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world—I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts. Whenever I use this tool I additionally verify the information. Just as I have done for several decades by reading books and by exploring libraries and archives. None of my texts, including the novel that will appear in Polish this fall, has been written with the help of artificial intelligence—except for using it as a tool for faster preliminary research.”
Tokarczuk’s remarks, and her subsequent statement, were met with consternation by many in the literary world. At the blog Pajiba, journalist Kayleigh Donaldson wrote, “Why would I ever feel incentivized to read a book if the author admitted that they sacrificed their innate curiosity to AI?…I have no patience for this slippery slope of, oh, well, I just use it for this little thing. How many gallons of water is a sufficient sacrifice for your own stupidity?”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
