Many decades ago (or so it seems, it was actually January 2023, but things move fast in AI-world) I wrote a Spectator piece claiming that The End of Writing was coming, thanks to AI. In return for this favor, I got large amounts of angry and derisory scorn, mainly from writerly types, who banged on about the uniqueness of human creation, but also from techy people, who pointed out that as a mere hack I could not possibly know anything about AI, and anyway AI was just a glorified next-word-predictor.

The French, being French, have responded with wise philosophy, or cowardly evasion, depending on your taste

The French, being French, have responded with wise philosophy, or cowardly evasion, depending on your taste

Now, I’m not the sort of cheap, mean-minded person who says “I told you so,” so I’ll just say “I told you so.” Or, as they put it in France, “I told you so, you bande de cons.” And I say it in French because the latest proof that I was right, back then in January 23, has emerged from France. Where the finest new novel of the French literary season was, it turns out, potentially written with AI. Mais oui.

The novel is C’était ça ou mourir (It was that or die), by Thélyson Orélien, a Haitian-born poet living in Quebec. It........

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