“People come to Ruskin Bond because Ruskin Bond sounds like himself and not like anyone else, or they go to, say, the nutritionist Rujuta Diwekar’s voice because she absolutely and utterly sounds like herself, with her sarcasm and humour. In general, the writers that people read have their own way of expressing themselves. So if there is a professional writer, they are going to sooner or later have to develop their own style. If AI or Tolstoy or George Orwell or Khushwant Singh is their first teacher, what does it matter? AI is perfectly competent. To find your voice is to find your voice... I can’t imagine AI will generate a huge readership for you, unless there’s something else that attracts the reader”

“When I write, my text is drawn from the language I use every day, which is further drawn from the languages I speak and think in, the multiple influences on the cultures of those languages, their history and resistance, the many intonations, unpredictabilities and particularities of phrases. AI bypasses all the essential thinking that constructs my language. It may be able to edit a text, but it cannot reproduce the language of my experiences”

“There’s a perverse pleasure available to writers in the age of AI. People have been saying for decades that this profession is doomed. Well, now it turns out that every profession is doomed, so we’re all in it together: either we fight the AI oligarchy for livelihoods, or we go down into the underclass together. Another consolation for writers: LLMs can produce convincing text, but it’s information, not knowledge. They can’t actually know things, only say things, and for the foreseeable future, there will be regions of human experience where our ability to know and tell won’t be replaceable by LLMs’ ability to steal, train and replicate.”

“Lately, I have received submissions from authors who openly admit to using AI for query letters, proposals, or even full manuscripts. One author recently withdrew a submission after realising he had allowed AI to “hijack” his voice. Another submitted an AI-generated Marathi translation of his own well-received Marathi book and was pleased with the result. For some time now, authors and agents have insisted that publishers add clauses to contracts stating that they will not use authors’ work to train AI models and will not rely on AI-generated cover art or other creative materials. After these latest controversies, publishers may want to add clauses that allow for termination if a book is found to have been written using AI. But how does one enforce such provisions when detection tools remain unreliable and often identify fully AI-generated writing as human, or vice versa?”

“In what dystopian hell do we imagine something built to render the working class unemployed and wholly destroy the planet is for the greater good? What gets my goat is the whole discourse around the inevitability of it all, that “you had better join in or get left behind”. That’s the textbook drivel those peddling the poison and the 0.1% who benefit from the sale of said poison have always employed. Inaction/casual use is no longer an option, it will only make us the fools who watched as a few old men set our house on fire while they built Noah’s arc-shaped national parks for themselves.”

“Since I’m not in academia or the corporate world, I’m not compelled to read reams of AI writing on a daily basis. As a result, I’m not especially skilled at spotting commonly known signs of machine writing, unless they are rather obvious. What I can tell, however, is essentially good writing from bad. And this is what confused me about the apparently AI produced Commonwealth Prize-winning short story. Whether written by AI or not, it was a very tedious story with unwieldy or nonsensical metaphors, cliched characters and no narrative arc. How did it win a prize? Has the all-consuming presence of AI led to even literary prize judges suspending all sound judgment? It is a deeply depressing thought that people are using AI to write fiction, but also that others seem happy to give up the notion that the work needs to be parsed or critiqued at all.”

“I think we will see more of genre fiction [romances, mysteries, basement-level science fiction and fantasy, and so on] being produced by AI and some readers might welcome such formulaic offerings because they will be put together very competently. However, there will be value attached to the creation of great literature, and I don’t think AI will dramatically change this. If you want to create a work of great originality and power, I believe you still have to apprentice yourselves to the great masters”

“Change is inevitable. The fullness of it and the real impact on writing and publishing will reveal itself soon enough. We are in the process of coming to terms with it, making use of tools that enhance efficiency, while being watchful about false representations of originality. Personally, I am hoping the change will settle into a clearer understanding of boundaries and the truly original and creative will attract even more value and appreciation than it already does.”