Half of UK Novelists Fear AI Will Replace Them Entirely, Cambridge Study Reveals

Half of UK authors fear AI could replace them - what my new research suggests about the future of the novel

University of Cambridge provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. Back in 2023, I was completing my doctorate on AI and gender bias and my debut novel, Something About Her, had just been published. It was also the year that many prominent authors including Jodi Picoult, John Grisham and George R.R. Martin filed a lawsuit against OpenAI for using their work to train generative artificial intelligence (a type of AI that creates new content based on user prompts) without permission. This case is still proceeding through the courts, as are many others on similar grounds. At the time, I remember thinking: we desperately need to know more about the implications of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) for the novel. As a writer, avid reader and an academic researching the impact of AI on work and society, this felt like a pivotal and crucial time to investigate this. Particularly as governments around the world continue to ask big questions about how AI is regulated, designed and used. In 2024, I started researching how hundreds of novelists and publishers were using GenAI across the UK. This consisted of a major survey with 332 literary creatives (258 published novelists, 42 professionals in fiction publishing, 32 literary agents for fiction); six focus groups with 52 writers and publishers; interviews and case studies with creatives and industry experts; and a forum which brought different stakeholders together to discuss the changes and challenges which GenAI is posing to the novel. What I found was starker than I had anticipated. The findings, published in my report, The Impact of Generative AI on the Novel, show just how urgently people in the industry want guardrails to be put around AI to help protect this precious art form. In my survey, 39% of novelists reported that their income has already been negatively affected by GenAI. They cited a range of reasons, including competition from AI-generated books, sabotage of sales due to rip-off AI-generated imitations of books appearing online under the names of real authors, and supplementary streams of income such as copywriting becoming scarce due to increased use of GenAI. The irony is, of course, that the work of these novelists has likely been used to train GenAI models. Almost two thirds of novelists (59%) reported that they know their work has already been used to train AI without permission or remuneration. Moreover, there was widespread concern shared about the future of the novel. Fifty-one percent of novelists said they think it's likely that AI will replace their work entirely. Literary creatives expressed concern about a loss of creativity and the de-skilling of younger generations through an increased use of GenAI. We already know that one in four children between the ages of eight and 12 are already using AI. Of the children who use it, four in ten use it for creative tasks. Literary creatives voiced fear around the use of AI within the creative process (where access needs do not require its use) and spoke about how this might affect the development of imagination, empathy, resilience, problem-solving and critical thinking, as well as what this might mean for the future of the art form. In my survey, 67% of novelists said they never use AI. Where novelists reported that they did use AI, it was most commonly for tasks they deemed to be "non-creative", such as admin or information search. There was recognition from many that AI could be useful so long as it is responsibly designed and trained on licensed data. There was not so much an anti-AI sentiment as there was a pro-responsible AI sentiment. By considering these findings, the UK government can better protect creative industries. The message from novelists, publishers and literary agents is clear - 86% support an opt-in model for AI training based on licensing structures which would enable them to give their informed consent and be fairly remunerated for the use of their work. There is also a clear call for transparency from AI companies concerning the data used to train their AI models. This would help to facilitate a licensing market and would help creatives to exercise their rights. Protecting the UK's thriving literary arts is of urgent importance. The novel is a key foundation of the creative industries, which contributes immense amounts of soft power and £126 billion gross value to the UK economy annually. Novels offer us so much, both personally and as a society. They entertain, educate and offer catharsis, connection with one another and self-discovery. We must fight to protect the novel, now more than ever. This article is part of our State of the Arts series. These articles tackle the challenges of the arts and heritage industry - and celebrate the wins, too.

Novelists worried AI could replace them, Cambridge report finds

Novelists are worried that artificial intelligence (AI) could take their jobs, according to a report. It found that about half of them said AI could "entirely replace" their work. Dr Clementine Collett, of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy (MCTD) at the University of Cambridge, surveyed 332 authors for the report. "There is widespread concern from novelists that generative AI trained on vast amounts of fiction will undermine the value of writing and compete with human novelists," she said.

Half of novelists fear AI will replace them entirely, survey finds

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player The novel has survived the industrial revolution, radio, television, and the internet. Now it's facing artificial intelligence - and novelists are worried. Half (51%) fear that they will be replaced by AI entirely, according to a new survey, even though for the most part they don't use the technology themselves. More immediately, 85% say they think their future income will be negatively impacted by AI, and 39% claim their finances have already taken a hit. Tracy Chevalier, the bestselling author of Girl With A Pearl Earring and The Glassmaker, shares that concern. "I worry that a book industry driven mainly by profit will be tempted to use AI more and more to generate books," she said in response to the survey. "If it is cheaper to produce novels using AI (no advance or royalties to pay to authors, quicker production, retainment of copyright), publishers will almost inevitably choose to publish them. "And if they are priced cheaper than 'human made' books, readers are likely to buy them, the way we buy machine-made jumpers rather than the more expensive hand-knitted ones." Why authors are so worried The University of Cambridge's Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy asked 258 published novelists and 74 industry insiders how AI is viewed and used in the world of British fiction. Alongside existential fears about the wholesale replacement of the novel, many authors reported a loss of income from AI, which they attributed to "competition from AI-generated books and the loss of jobs which provide supplementary streams of income, such as copywriting". Some respondents reported finding "rip-off AI-generated imitations" of their own books, as well books "written under their name which they haven't produced". Last year, the Authors Guild warned that "the growing access to AI is driving a new surge of low-quality sham 'books' on Amazon", which has limited the number of publications per day on its Kindle self-publishing platform to combat the influx of AI-generated books. The median income for a novelist is currently £7,000 and many make ends meet by doing related work, such as audiobook narration, copywriting or ghost-writing. Read more: The author embracing AI to help write novels These tasks, authors feared, were already being supplanted by AI, although little evidence was provided for this claim, which was not possible to verify independently. Copyright was also a big concern, with 59% of novelists reporting that they knew their work had been used to train AI models. Of these, 99% said they did not give permission and 100% said they were not remunerated for this use. Earlier this year, AI firm Anthropic agreed to pay authors $1.5bn (£1.2bn) to settle a lawsuit which claimed the company stole their work. The judge in the US court case ruled that Anthropic had downloaded more than seven million digital copies of books it "knew had been pirated" and ordered the firm to pay authors compensation. However, the judge sided with Anthropic over the question of copyright, saying that the AI model was doing something akin to when a human reads a book to inspire new work, rather than simply copying. Read more from Sky News: Scientists sound alarm over ultra-processed foods 'What is it really like being a British journalist in Moscow?' Most novelists - 67% - never used it for creative work, although a few said they found it very useful for speeding up drafting or editing. One case study featured in the report is Lizbeth Crawford, a novelist in multiple genres, including fantasy and romance. She describes working with AI as a writing partner, using it to spot plot holes and trim adjectives. "Lizbeth used to write about one novel per year, but now she can do three per year, and her target is five," notes the author of the report, Dr Clementine Collett. Is there a role for government? Despite this, the report's foreword urges the government to slow down the spread of AI by strengthening copyright law to protect authors and other creatives. The government has proposed making an exception to UK copyright law for "text and data mining", which might make authors and other copyright holders opt out to stop their work being used to train AI models. "That approach prioritises access to data for the world's technology companies at the cost to the UK's own creative industries," writes Professor Gina Neff, executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy. "It is both bad economics and a betrayal of the very cultural assets of British soft power." A government spokesperson said: "Throughout this process we have, and always will, put the interests of the UK's citizens and businesses first. "We've always been clear on the need to work with both the creative industries and AI sector to drive AI innovation and ensure robust protections for creators. "We are bringing together both British and global companies, alongside voices beyond the AI and creative sectors, to ensure we can capture the broadest possible range of expert views as we consider next steps."

Novelists are increasingly fearful they'll be replaced by AI

As AI grows in capability, writers, artists, and all creatives are worried that their work could be replaced by cheap imitations in time built on the backbone of their creations. Novelists especially fear the coming of the AI revolution, as 85% think their future income will be negatively impacted by AI. That's from a new study caught by Sky News, in which we also see that 51% of all novelists that took part believe that they will be replaced entirely by AI. "If it is cheaper to produce novels using AI (no advance or royalties to pay to authors, quicker production, retainment of copyright), publishers will almost inevitably choose to publish them," said Tracy Chevalier, author of Girl With A Pearl Earring. Some respondents in the survey said they'd already found AI "imitations," of their own books. Of course, AI doesn't just do this on its own, and someone will have to direct it to ripping off an author, but the problem is that the floodgates are now open for people trying to make a quick buck off the creativity of another. Respondents to the survey want tighter government crackdown on AI in relation to copyright laws, but some do believe AI has a future in novel creation. Editing and drafting processes can be quickly sped up by AI, but there are fears that this could remove a key essence of writing.