Much handwringing is going on among writers about the impending terrors of generative AI and their potentially predatory behaviour. They’re being trained on our pirated books, say the writers, and they don’t chew their food. How can they, since they’re being force-fed every last bit of verbiage their proprietors can filch? Will they just gobble us up like great white sharks, burping out an endless stream of teeth, bones, and ersatz fictions claiming to be by us? Will they infiltrate themselves into us like the emotionless pod people in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and eat us from the inside out, transforming us into fakes of ourselves and giving pink flowers a bad name?
Are they malevolent aliens, or are they more like human criminals? They certainly can’t be depended on to tell the truth, except maybe about things like airline schedules. But can they write convincing Harlequin Romance novels? Will the real Harlequin Romance writers be done out of their jobs?
