According to a 2025 Bookbub survey of over 1,200 authors, almost half (45 per cent) use generative AI. In 2026, that figure could be higher. But is this anything to be concerned about? After all, the literary world has undergone major changes before.
New-Age Authors
The invention of physical books was once highly controversial. Thousands of years ago, stories like The Odyssey were told orally. Across Ancient Greece, poets used to memorise tales that were tens of thousands of lines long. In Persia, a naqqal, or master storyteller, would earn their living reciting poetry and prose. And until the Elizabethan era, poets like Edmund Spenser, author of The Faerie Queen, wouldn’t have just written stories — they were expected to perform them too. At one point in history, the printed book was seen as an intellectual regression because it signalled the end of memorising large swaths of text.
Funny how views have changed. Nowadays, having your book printed either physically in paperback or digitally is the norm. Not so for ancient civilisations. For them, a reliance on the written word was almost akin to cheating, as the author no longer had to memorise a single word of their story. Similarly, we may argue now that those writers who use AI are cheating, too. But what about in ten years? Or a hundred years from now? Using a machine to help us put our ideas and sentences together might just become the new norm. Of course, this argument applies only to those writers who use generative AI as a helping hand, instead of a daily crutch. Someone who needs ChatGPT or Claude to write out whole paragraphs for them and generate interesting narrative arcs probably shouldn’t be writing in the first place, or should clearly give thanks to their preferred LLM in the acknowledgements section of the book.
However, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that authors must embrace new technology instead of burying their heads in the sand. Why? Because the world will move on without them regardless. The case of the Luddites in the19th century is a helpful example of how history tends to march relentlessly onwards. The Luddites were a group of disgruntled English textile workers who revolted over fears that the introduction of the industrial loom would put them out of their jobs. As of 2025, over half of fiction writers fear they will be entirely replaced by AI. We of course know that the Luddites did not stop the spread of automation by smashing a few machines. And so, today’s authors must learn to use AI to their advantage. This could mean using it to speed up their research, or finding the best translation options of certain words and phrases if a story is set in a different culture, or maybe getting AI to help with stylistic tweaks and better structuring — in which case it would double up as a good editor. The point here is that AI can be a very helpful tool, and that’s exactly how it should be used — as an additional tool in a writer’s toolbox.
The Business of Writing
The Bookbub’s revelations about how authors actually use generative AI are what interested me most. Research was the main reason why authors use AI. This makes sense, particularly if their genre is Historical Fiction or Crime. The usual lack of direct experience needs to be balanced with details and facts to make the narrative vivid and realistic. Next was copy for marketing purposes, outlining or plotting, editing or proofreading and jacket copy, such as blurbs or taglines. Writing, thankfully, was sixth on the list. For me, this information was a relief. It proves that the majority of authors still value their craft and primarily use AI to handle the business side of writing.
As novelist Ajay Chowdhury told The Independent, using AI is like having an ‘editor on demand.’ This means that up-and-coming authors who lack the funds to hire a human editor can still ensure that their work is written to a high standard, grammatically speaking. Additionally, Anthony Horowitz, the inventor of the Alex Rider series, has admitted to using AI ‘all the time’ but ‘strictly [for] research,’ arguing that it ‘would be crazy to give up this incredible resource.’ By utilising AI for all the non-writing aspects of being a storyteller, such as marketing books on social media or pitching novels to publishing houses, authors can free up more time to focus on honing their craft and doing what they love. So, instead of replacing writers, evidence shows that generative AI is actually helping novelists and poets to increase their output.
But what about those writers who rely on LLMs (Large Language Models) to generate whole sections of text for them, plus the seven per cent still on the fence but who are not against using it to do the work for them in the future? Well, according to Peter Stockwell, Professor of Literary Linguistics at the University of Nottingham’s School of English, they probably will not fare very well. That’s because AI can generate stories that have a beginning, middle and an end, but they will lack the quality and substance required to stand out in the highly competitive publishing industry.
‘If you want something that’s … very mediocre and entirely functional, it’s amazingly good at that,’ he says.
As AI-written novels flood the market, readers will soon learn to differentiate between language that is entirely plausible versus writing that is genuinely meaningful and resonates with them. Arguably, humans will always choose humans. We live through our senses. Some of the best stories ever written earned that title because they are highly evocative. Ann Radcliffe describes the French and Italian countryside in exquisite detail in The Mysteries of Udolpho. Asako Yuzuki conjures the exact taste and texture of the food she discusses in Butter. And, in his experimentalist novel RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR, Philip Hoare documents humanity’s long-held fascination with the sea. In all these instances, the author’s personal experience was central to the descriptive quality of the narrative. AI will never be able to write so singularly because it lacks a body through which to experience the world. It’s really that simple.
Innovation and Disruption
Which brings me to my next point: why authors write in the first place. Romantic stalwarts like Keats railed against materialism and sought to remind the public of the fulfilment that can be found in the natural world. Gothic novelists like Wilde, Shelley, Stoker and Stevenson highlighted the societal corruption beneath the façade of Victorian respectability. WWI poets like Owen and Sassoon used inventive techniques like satire, allegory and para-rhyme to highlight the human toll of conflict. And post-WWII, the literary scene became grittier and more dystopian, spawning anti-establishment authors like Orwell, Bradford, Heller, Vonnegut and Burgess.
The best writers are disruptors. AI is worse than unoriginal — it is complacent. Having been trained on existing content, it can replicate the style of any author, but it will never produce a new style. And it cannot create a story that’s fresh or innovative, or respond to the socio-political atmosphere of our times. If anything, AI has done us a favour. Mediocre authors and ‘airport books’ will soon be replaced by ChatGPT. Only the best human talent, those writers who produce something genuinely groundbreaking, will survive. That’s exactly as it should be.
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