Sci-fi authors Scalzi and Stross decry AI's dystopian impact on their craft
LLMs are theft by 'absolute scum' who make life harder for writers by putting them in copyright peril
Prominent science fiction authors Scalzi and Stross have expressed strong opposition to the use of artificial intelligence in the creative process. Charles Stross, who has written for The Register in his Laundry Files novels, strongly condemns large language models, stating that no serious author should use them. He claims Anthropic AI has pirated eBooks to train their models, and that they are fine-tuning the models to maximize profits.
Stross calls AI companies "absolute scum" for stealing copyrighted material. Similarly, John Scalzi warns against incorporating AI into any aspect of the publishing process. He advises authors to avoid AI editing, art, translation, and other uses, as this could call into question the originality of their work. While acknowledging there may be some valid uses for AI as a decision-support tool, Stross believes they should never replace the author's own work.
Both authors express concern that AI could disadvantage new writers who lack pre-ChatGPT experience, and warn that AI tools are making it harder for all writers.
Written by urgent.news from The Register's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
