Will AI Figure It Out Eventually?

Will AI eventually learn how to write like a human author?

Yes.

Right now, any discerning person can easily distinguish between an AI-written book and one that's human-authored, but that's going to change. And then where will human creativity be? It will be extinct. 

The "good news" is, the younger generation isn't reading all that much anyway, so it won't matter in the long run. Even the AI scammers will discover the futility of their efforts. 

We human writers are already being punished for the glut of AI books. Take D2D's new fees, for example. Because it's been overrun by AI slop, Draft2Digital will begin charging us real people to publish our books and capping it off with a low sales penalty, just for fun. Boy, that'll show those bots!   

I'm surprised that in the publishing world AI hasn't yet mastered the art of trickery. AI music now is virtually indistinguishable from actual music. An acquaintance of ours has used AI to produce several of his songs, and I've listened closely for telltale signs of fakery. But even the "vocalists" include the sound of taking a breath before singing the next line. Nice touch! 

On Spotify, a couple of AI tracks have claimed the top download positions. I've read comments from people to the effect of, "I don't care if it's AI. I like it!" I don't think there's any coming back from that.

Maybe music is easier because of the compactness of lyrics. I've written both, and writing a novel is nothing like penning a song. I could probably sit here and dash off some very good lyrics in 30 minutes; bad lyrics in 5. I spent a year writing Running From Herself, and that doesn't include editing. Of course, AI can create a novel in the time it takes me to write some bad lyrics, but try as it might, it can't yet create human emotion.

Eventually it will. 

IT guys are rather bot-like, which explains why that technique hasn't yet been mastered, but all it'll take is for a company to pay some willing writers enough $$ to take over the task. 

Or it can just continue stealing real authors' books until it's gotten enough data to crack the code.

"Why do humans in books act so unpredictably? This doesn't compute at all."

"Here. Read these seven million novels I stole for you. You're 'smart'. You'll figure out the formula."

At least right now, sites like D2D are trying (poorly) to combat this glut, but they'll give in to it. Companies always do. Even heretofore respected marketing experts have climbed aboard. One guy I used to read is now touting the benefits of using AI.  

Organic writers are now being accused of using AI. The AI detectors flag approximately 95% of prose as AI-generated. Is it because of the em dash? 😉 Well, no. It's because AI was trained on human writing, and now it's flipped the tables and decided that human writing must be AI, because AI was trained on....(why is my head pounding?)

At some point in the near future, once AI has taken over from creatives, I envision a return to hand crafts; something undoable by a computer. Because people need creativity in their lives. People need to make something. It's innate. It was innate for me when I was five years old and it still is today. 

But storytelling? Nah, that'll be gone.  

Writers are facing a losing battle. Sure, we might still have a few years left to sell our human wares, but we'd better get crackin'. Pick up the pace. Get those puppies out into the world while there's still a chance.  

After that? It's high time we learn to knit.