The End of Literature? AI and the Future of Writing

What will AI do to literature? Nobody doubts that Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce text. Indeed, there are fears of a text-apocalypse, as bots speak to bots, humans automate their own writing, and the processed word proliferates. But what happens to literature, to literary writing, and even to literary theory, in all this? Literature might be simulated perhaps, but can it be generated anew? Is there even such as thing as AI literature? If so, how might we taxonomise it, understand it as distinctive, or study it? Perhaps we should consider instead what might be termed a post-literature – if so what might this look like? This lecture takes up some of these questions through a re-consideration of creativity, understood not as a single moment, or a single work, but as process generated across what is here termed a new passage of forms.

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Authors, Deadbots, Science Fiction

I research technical media and cultural change – often in relation to specific forms (literature, visual culture, media arts), but also in relation to theory and method. In this reading group I’ve included some work that looks at different aspects of this. The first reading considers the future of literature in an age of GenAI. The second reading explores the uncanny and the digital afterlife. The third is brief and considers the relationship between fictional and ‘real’ futures. I hope we can use them as a jumping off point to explore some of the themes that interest me, and that might also be areas you are working on. I’ve included an article on scholarly editing if you have time for some background reading.

Reading List - reading materials will be sent upon successful registration

Key reading:

• ‘Contagious Life, Clones, Deadbots, Digital Twins’. Culture Machine. Vol 24. (2025).
• ‘Except in Science Fiction? Why you can get there from here’ in Micheal Shamiyeh (eds), Practices of Futurecasting. De Gruyter Brill: London.
   

Optional reading:

• ‘The Author, Poor Bastard’ in Lively et al (eds). The Routledge Handbook of AI and Literature. London: Routledge. (2025) 19-26.
• ‘The Construct Editor: Tweaking with Jane, Writing with Ted, Editing with an AI?’. Textual Cultures. May 2022.

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