Human creativity can save books from AI production line

Research by two University of the Sunshine Coast academics and novelists has identified a key element of fiction-writing that cannot be replicated by generative artificial intelligence - human creativity.

Associate Professor of Creative Writing Paul Williams and Education academic Dr Shelley Davidow said the findings offered hope for the future of books, both for readers wanting quality literature and creative writers wanting rewarding careers.

The UniSC presentation at a recent international writing conference in London was 'Humans versus Robots: countering AI and the commodification of creative writing'.

It followed a paper co-authored with the University of A Coruna in Spain, titled 'A Confederacy of Models: a Comprehensive Evaluation of LLMs on Creative Writing' which evaluated complex short stories written by people and 12 open-source and commercial AI language models such as ChatGPT.

"The study found that some commercial AI models could write as well as people according to criteria such as fluency, coherence, originality and style, while humour was hit-and-miss," Dr Williams said.

Dr Davidow said AI authors could not replace human authors in terms of the sharing of human experience, the human connection between reader and writer, and the 'humanness' of the creative process itself.

"Good literature creates relationships over time between human writers and readers," she said.

"A robot does not have a 'self'. It does not love, feel or change emotionally and psychologically.

"As long as we maintain our humanity enough that we crave connection with characters and insights and worlds generated by other skilled humans, readers will want to connect with the storyteller and their experience and art over distance, and even over generations."

The paper 'A Confederacy of Models' last month won best paper of The Conference of the Spanish Association for Artificial Intelligence (CAEPIA).