He described the results of the ChatGPT prompt as “a bunch of crap.”
Paris:
Artificial intelligence tools may pose a threat to thriller and science fiction writers but lack the originality and humor to challenge serious novelists, Salman Rushdie wrote in a French magazine published on Thursday.
In an article translated for the literary magazine La Nouvelle Revue Francaise (NRF), Rushdie said he tested ChatGPT, asking it to write 200 words in his style.
He described the result as “a bunch of crap.”
“No reader who reads one of my pages will think that I am the author. That is reassuring,” he said, according to a translation of the AFP article.
However, the Booker Prize-winning author of “The Satanic Verses” and “Midnight’s Children” says generative AI writing tools could pose a threat to more formulaic writers.
“The problem is that these biology evolve very quickly,” he said, adding that this could worry writers in genres such as thrillers and science fiction, where originality is less important.
For film and television writers, the threat may be especially acute.
“Given that Hollywood is constantly creating new versions of the same movie, AI can be used to draft scripts,” he said.
He was scathing about the ChatGPT technology, saying it was “unoriginal” and seemed “totally devoid of any sense of humor.”
Rushdie went into hiding for years after a death threat from Iran in 1989 over his allegedly anti-Islamic “The Satanic Verses.”
In August 2022, he lost an eye after being stabbed by a Lebanese-American citizen at a literary conference in the New York area.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
