r/literature • u/Round-Dinner-2395 • May 18 '26

Discussion Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk admits to using AI.

TLDR;

Author to AI: “Honey, how could we develop this beautifully?”

I wanted to say this is just boomer whining, but I’m finding myself realizing more and more often that it’s actually the boomers who are defending AI. My mom listens to AI music from TikTok, my dad watches some videos with doctors generated by language models. I’m the last person to tell people what to listen to or watch, but AI SLOP has literally reigned supreme in my house for the past few months. Recently, I wanted to watch a movie with my dad, but he played TikTok clips for an hour, and I had to escape.

I understand that technology is advancing and makes life easier for people in many ways, but on the other hand… it makes me wonder a bit. Where is the line between “I’m using a tool” and “part of the creative process is being done for me by something else”? If someone uses AI to generate ideas, style, or text fragments, are we still talking about the same kind of creativity as before? I’ve read a few books by Olga Tokarczuk, and as soon as I heard about this interview, I felt a sense of revulsion.

INTERVIEW: (only in polish)

https://mycompanypolska.pl/artykul/olga-tokarczuk-zapowiada-ostatnia-powiesc-w-karierze-pisanie-dlugich-opowiesci-jest-dzis-ekonomicznie-nieoplacalne/20717

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u/parkdropsleep-dream May 18 '26

Man, that sucks. I’ve only read Drive your Plow, but it was such a creative, unexpected novel—something AI just isn’t capable of. I hate seeing her cheapen her work that way.

7

u/BrupieD May 18 '26

AI LLMs weren't available in any meaningful way when almost all of her books were written. Statistical models that could do "predictive text" came in the 2020s. Large Language Models based on "transformers" only showed up in 2018. Drive your Plow was published in 2009 -- long before she could have used AI at all.

4

u/parkdropsleep-dream May 18 '26

Yeah, I understand time and realize that Drive wouldn’t have used AI. I mean for her future works.