>Olga Tokarczuk has responded to the controversy over her reputed use of AI.

https://lithub.com/olga-tokarczuk-has-responded-to-the-contr...

Update: On Tuesday afternoon, Tokarczuk sent a statement to Lit Hub via her publisher, Riverhead, denying she used AI in her writing for anything other than research. Read it here:

>After Nobel Prize-winner Olga Tokarczuk’s recent remarks implying she had used AI to write her recent novel made the rounds on social media, the novelist shared a statement with Lit Hub via her publisher, addressing the controversy:

Like any other conversation, remarks made before a live audience at a public event can be incorrectly understood.

I did not write my forthcoming book – to be published in fall 2026 in Polish – either using AI or with anyone else. For several decades I have written alone.

I state briefly and firmly:

1. I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world – I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts. Whenever I use this tool I additionally verify the information. Just as I have done for several decades by reading books and by exploring libraries and archives.

2. None of my texts, including the novel that will appear in Polish this fall, has been written with the help of artificial intelligence – except for using it as a tool for faster preliminary research.

3. I am sometimes inspired by dreams, but before this sentence too is cornered and torn to pieces by the experts, I hasten to report that they are my own dreams.

Olga Tokarczuk, May 19, 2026, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

> I make use of artificial intelligence on the same principles as most people in the world – I treat it as a tool that allows faster documenting and checking of facts.

I have no idea of this author, nor care if she uses AI to research topics, but fact checking? Do people use AI for that?

The winner of the the Caribbean category of the 2026 Commonwealth Short Story Prize has been accused of using AI. (I think I also read somewhere that one of the judges was accused of using AI to judge the stories but can't find a source for that)

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/...

Read her books. You will understand she doesn't need AI.

I think Burroughs would have leaned into AI... probably would have cut up its responses anyway! We all know that LLMs are terrible at producing interesting writing so I agree with other comments here along the lines of... even if a writer includes generated text, if it rises to the task and the author has somehow made it interesting, good for them!

The author said that she used AI for research which I find reasonable. I just ordered two of her books House of Day, House of Night and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

I don't even know what this story is trying to be about. She won the Nobel (and the Man Booker) many years before the public availability of LLMs. It sounds like she's saying she used LLMs the same way people used Google, before LLMs supplanted it. So what?

"Flights" is a good read.

Author writes book using search engine.

Author writes book using word processor.

Author writes book using typewriter.

Author writes book using ...

Cool, I also use AI as a tool.

art is dead, the only thing that remains it's its simulacra

Honestly, instead of just blanket judging based on if AI is involved, lets just judge the work in question. If you can prompt your way to a nobel-class novel, that is almost even mors impressive than writing it yourself.

Kinda interesting that more boomers embrace AI than zoomers.

This is personal opinion anecdata, but I'm noticing the following.

It's only the mediocres that rail against AI; actual geniuses are like "hey, another tool. Cool."

Aren’t we already reaching the point where AI is using content generated by other AIs, like in a game of Chinese whispers? And through osmosis it's now reaching the writings of Nobel laureates too?

No comment on whether the book seems AI-generated or not, but:

It is quite insidious how AI is trained on real-world writers, who then get accused of being a copy, not the original.

It makes me think the future of language, at least in realms where authenticity matters, is going to be constantly changing slang, experimental structures, etc. – all things that boilerplate LLMs will never give you.

I am starting to think that most of the stuff that gets awards at the Novel ( or Oscars ) level is at best mediocre. By comparison, I wouldn't have a problem telling people to read Sapkowski in original the same way I would argue that the best way to read Pratchett or Adams is in original. That is how good it is ( and translations for either are not bad at all ). Otoh, maybe her creations are not intended for a person like me.

Anyway, I somehow doubt the denial from her as sincere. Not that it changes much.

It's clickbait. She gave an interview where she said she used AI to help get her brain going, and the headline made it sound like she had AI write the book.

She used AI the way I as a writer use my friends online: to say things, see what they say back, and get it to make my brain create new connections.

As a writer, I think a lot about the ethics of using AI in the creation of art. As of right now, here's some opinions/ethics I've formed:

1. there's no such thing as AI art, just AI pictures, AI books, etc.

2. AI can be used in the creation of art, but what matters is that the final contributor to the creation is human.

This one is a little fuzzy and I'm still working on how to formalize it, but the broad strokes of my intent here is that AI pictures where you draw a blue line at the end and say "I did the final work, so it's art" counts as art if the point was the blue line rather than as loophole-finding.

For example, if you're writing a novel that is about AI and you use AI to generate the stuff the AI says, this could be valid art if the point is to interrogate the use of AI in writing as opposed to just to be lazy and avoid having to write some of your book.

But what's important to me is that we explicitly exclude "I made this painting and then asked AI to make it prettier because I am not technically proficient and want it to look dope," which is why I require the final touch to be by a human.

3. AI is distinct from other art-creation tools (like paints, brushes, CNC machines, 3D printers in that it does not permit reproducibility).

I'm still working on how to formalize this, but y'all get the idea, right? AI is kind of a black box that spits out stuff. We can't explain how exactly, and it's stochastic. But the application of paint is also stochastic because of chaos.

No one has flawless control over the flow/spread of paint. Capillary action will have some "randomness" to it. But that randomness is minute, possibly irrelevant to the result. E.g., the Mona Lisa wouldn't be affected if the paint that Leonardo applied had, at a microscopic level, adhered/penetrated the canvas differently.

Overall, the "core" of the work needs to be human-driven. Tools don't affect this, but AI is a special tool that gets higher scrutiny than other tools because it purports to replace the human. It's referred to as "intelligence." Even if it isn't actually intelligent, it is intended to be, and is interpreted and used to replace.

If it's not used to replace, then it's (probably) okay. Still working on my general framework.

But I think about it a lot because I recognize the benefits of AI in art creation. Writing is often lonely, and I do find immense value in just throwing shit at a wall, seeing what comes back, and riffing on that. I don't drop AI stuff into my works.

But I will often be like "oh that's a really cool idea" and then expand/mutate that. Like, "where might a mother and daughter go to bond?" and AI gives me back "spa" with statements like it's dimly lit, relaxing, etc.

If I then write 5,000 words about a trip to the spa, I don't see that as AI writing my work. I see it as comparable to asking my buddy at the bar who isn't attempting to be artistic when talking to me about this kind of thing. Might not (probably doesn't) know I'm even thinking about writing when I ask.

Anyway, that gets to the issue of whether the use of AI makes the end result art or not. That doesn't address ethical issues about using it.

Personally, I feel like the environmental issue is a non-starter. I don't play video games. I don't really use much single-use plastic. My electrical usage is minimal excluding AC. Not only do I think my AI use still leaves me below average electricity user for someone in my country, but I think if I were an average person, my AI usage consumes less power than my peers playing video games or running a pool pump at their house or something.

I think I read that the sum total of all AI usage in the US increases our electrical consumption by some minuscule amount per person. Less than 1%? Seems like a useless line of argument.

Better to talk about how artists' works (and other people's works) were "stolen" (sometimes literally, sometimes just in spirit because a EULA permitted this but users wouldn't have liked it). That seems wrong, and it's the hardest issue for me to deal with personally. I try to minimize AI usage for this reason.

And still better is to talk about how AI seems to be bound for replacing humans-in-art. One of the great joys of being human is that we can create art. And AI is facilitating people abandoning artistic creation in favor of querying AI.

"I wanna read a She-Ra fanfic about XYZ, Gemini write one." How about you write it yourself and experience the frustrating, vinegar-strokes joy of the creative act? Don't throw away an important part of being human for expedience's sake!

I have much less concern about art for non-artistic, non-artisanal purposes; write that one-off bash script with AI! Artisanal-purposes seems more iffy. Like writing a small app to help with a task and then putting it up on Apple Store to share with others. On one hand, it helps. On the other hand, it does hurt the artisanal nature of code creation (part art, but with non-artistic utility).

Jiminy crickets this is probably my longest comment on HN ever. Would love to see some responses because I am trying my best. I think Ai is great for many tasks. But fuck AI in art. I will never knowingly read an AI book. I will never knowingly view AI art-as-art.

(Edited to add more paragraph breaks. Yes, I'm a writer. No, I won't do four rounds of drafts of a HN comment.)